The psychology of socialism

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THE PSYCHOLOGY
OF SOCIALISM

THE PSYCHOLOGY
OF SOCIALISM

By

Gustave Le Bon

NEW YORK

THE MACMILLAN CO.

1899

A l'£miNENT fcONOMISTE

PAUL DELOMBRE

DfPUTlS,

MINISTRE DU COMMERCE, DE L'iNDUSTRIE,

DBS POSTES, ET DES TEL^GRAPHES.

SON AMI D^VOUi

GUSTAVE LE BON.

PREFACE

SOCIALISM consists of a synthesis of beliefs, aspira-
tions, and ideas of reform which appeals profoundly
to the mind. Governments fear it, legislators manipulate
it, nations behold in it the dawn of happier destinies.

This book is devoted to the study of Socialism. In it
will be found the application of those principles already
set forth in my two last works — The Psychology of Peoples
and The Psychology of the Crowd. Passing rapidly over
the details of the doctrines in question, and retaining
their essentials alone, I shall examine the causes which
have given birth to Socialism, and those which favour or
retard its propagation. I shall show the conflict of
those ancient ideas, fixed by heredity, on which societies
are still reposed, with the new ideas, born of the new
conditions which have been created by the evolution
of modern science and industry. Without contesting the
lawfulness of the tendencies of the greater number to
ameliorate their condition, I shall inquire whether it is
possible for institutions to have a real influence in this
amelioration, or whether our destinies are not decided by
necessities entirely independent of the institutions which
our wills may create.

Socialism has not wanted apologists to write its history,
economists to discuss its dogmas, and apostles to propa-

viii PREFACE

gate its faith. Hitherto psychologists have disdained to
study it, perceiving in it only one of those elusive and
indefinite subjects, like theology and politics, which can
lead only to such impassioned and futile discussions as
are hateful to the scientific mind. It would seem, how-
ever, that nothing but an intent psychology can exhibit
the genesis of the new doctrines, or explain the influence
exerted by them over the vulgar mind as well as over a
certain number of cultivated understandings. We must
dive to the deepest roots of the events whose evolution
we are considering if we would attain a comprehension
of the blossom.

No apostle has ever doubted of the future of his faith, and
the Socialists are persuaded of the approaching triumph
of theirs. Such a victory implies of necessity the destruc-
tion of the present society, and its reconstruction on other
bases. To the disciples of the new dogmas nothing
appears more simple. It is evident that a society may be
disorganised by violence, just as a building, laboriously
constructed, may be destroyed in an hour by fire. But
does our modern knowledge of the evolution of things
allow us to admit that man is able to re-fashion, accord-
ing to his liking, a society that has so been destroyed ?
So soon as we penetrate a little into the mechanism of
civilisations we quickly discover that a society, with its
institutions, its beliefs, and its arts, represents a tissue of
ideas, sentiments, customs, and modes of thought deter-
mined by heredity, the cohesion of which constitutes its
strength. No society is firmly held together unless this
moral heritage is solidly established, and established not
in codes but in the natures of men; the one declines
when the other crumbles, and when this moral heritage
is finally disintegrated the society is doomed to disappear.

Such a conception has never influenced the writers and
the peoples of the Latin States. Persuaded as they are

PREFACE

IX

that the necessities of nature will efface themselves before
their ideal of levelment, regularity, and justice, they
believe it sufficient to imagine enlightened constitutions,
and laws founded on reason, in order to re-fashion the
world. They are still possessed by the illusions of the
heroic epoch of the Revolution, when philosophers and
legislators held it certain that a society was an artificial
thing, which benevolent dictators could rebuild in
entirety.

Such theories do not appear tenable to-day. We must
not, however, disdain them, for they constitute the motives
of action of a destructive influence which is greatly to be
feared, because very considerable. The power of creation
waits upon time and place ; it is beyond the immediate
reach of our desires ; but the destructive faculty is always
at hand. The destruction of a society may be very rapid,
but its reconstruction is always very slow. Sometimes
man requires centuries of effort to rebuild, painfully, that
which he destroyed in a day.

If we would comprehend the profound influence of
modern Socialism we need only to examine its doctrines.
When we come to investigate the causes of its success we
find that this success is altogether alien to the theories
proposed, and the negations imposed by these doctrines.
Like religions (and Socialism is tending more and more
to put on the guise of a religion) it propagates itself in
any manner rather than by reason. Feeble in the extreme
when it attempts to reason, and to support itself by
economic arguments, it becomes on the contrary
extremely powerful when it remains in the region of
dreams, affirmations, and chimerical promises, and if it
were never to issue thence it would become even more
redoubtable.

Thanks to its promises of regeneration, thanks to the
hope it flashes before all the disinherited of life. Socialism

X PREFACE

^ becoming a belief of a religious character rather than
a doctrine. Now the great power of beliefs, when they
ffe^nd to assume this religious form, of whose mechanism
I have elsewhere treated, lies in the fact that their
propagation is independent of the proportion of truth
or error that they may contain, for as soon as a
belief has gained a lodging in the minds of men its
absurdity no longer appears ; reason cannot reach it, and
only time can impair it. The most profound thinkers of
humanity — Leibnitz, Descartes, Newton — have bowed
themselves without a murmur before religious doctrines
whose weaknesses reason would quickly have discovered,
had they been able to submit them to the ordeal of
criticism. What has once entered the region of senti-
ment can no longer be touched by discussion. Religions,
acting as they do only on the sentiments, cannot be
destroyed by arguments, and it is for this reason that
their power over the mind has always been so absolute.

The present age is one of those periods of transition in
which the old beliefs have lost their empire, while those
which must replace the old are not yet estabhshed.
Hitherto man has been unable to live without divinities.
They fall often from their throne, but that throne has,
never remained empty ; new phantoms are rising always
from the dust of the dead gods.

Science, which has wrestled with the gods, has never
been able to dispute their prodigious empire. No civilisa-
tion has ever yet succeeded in establishing and extending
itself without them. The most flourishing civilisations
have always been propped up by religious dogmas which,
from the rational point of view, possessed not an atom
of logic, not a spice of truth, nor even of simple good
,™sense. Reason and logic have never been the true guides
of nations. The irrational has always been one of the
most powerful motives of action known to humanity.

PREFACE xi

It is not by the faint light of reason that the world has
been transformed. While religions, founded on chimeras,
have marked their indelible impririt on all the elements of
civilisations, and continue to retain the immense majority
of men under their laws, the systems of philosophy built
on reason have played only an insignificant part in the
life of nations, and have had none but an ephemeral
existence. They indeed offer the crovs^d nothing but
arguments, while the human soul demands nothing but
hopes.

These hopes are those that religions have always given,
and they have given also an ideal capable of seducing
and stirring the mind. It is under their magic wand that
the most powerful empires have been created, and the
marvels of literature and art, which form the common
treasure of civihsation, have risen out of chaos.

Socialism, whose dream is to substitute itself for the
ancient faiths, proposes but a very low ideal, and to
establish it appeals but to sentiments lower still. What,
in effect, does it promise, more than merely our daily
bread, and that at the price of hard labour ? With what
lever does it seek to raise the soul ? With the sentiments
of envy and hatred which it creates in the hearts of multi-
tudes ? To the crowd, no longer satisfied with political—)
and civic equality, it proposes equality of condition, with- ''
out dreaming that social inequalities are born of those
natural inequalities that man has always been powerless .
to change.

It would seem that beliefs founded on so feeble an
ideal, on sentiments so little elevated, could have but few
chances of propagating themselves. However, they do
propagate themselves, for man possesses the marvellous
faculty of transforming things to the liking of his desires,
of regarding them only through that magical prism of the
thoughts and sentiments which shows us the world as we

xii PREFACE

wish it to be. Each, at the bidding of his dreams, his
ambitions, his hopes, peixeives in Sociahsm what the
founders of the new faith never dreamed of putting into
it. In Socialism the priest perceives the universal exten-
sion of charity, and dreams of charity while he forgets the
altar. The slave, bowed in his painful labour, catches a
confused glimpse of the shining paradise where he, in his
turn, will be loaded with good things. The enormous
legion of the discontented — and who is not of it to-day ?
— ^hopes, through the triumph of Socialism, for the
amelioration of its destiny. It is the sum of all these
dreams, all these discontents, all these hopes, that endows
the new faith with its incontestable power.

In order that the Socialism of the present day might
assume so quickly that religious form which constitutes
the secret of its power, it was necessary that it should
appear at one of those rare moments of history when the
old religions lose their might (men being weary of their
gods), and exist only on sufferance, while awaiting the
new faith that is to succeed them. Socialism, coming as
it came, at the precise instant when the power of the old
divinities had considerably waned, is naturally tending to
possess itself of their place. There is nothing to show
that it will not succeed in taking it. There is everything
to show that it will not succeed in keeping it long.

CONTENTS

BOOK I

THE SOCIALISTIC THEORIES AND THEIR DISCIPLES

PAGE

Chapter I. — The Various Aspects of Socialism . . . i

Chapter II. — TheOrigin of Socialism and the Causes of its Present

Development . . . . . . 8

Chapter III. — The Theories of Socialism . . . .23

Chapter IV. — The Disciples of Socialism and their Mental State . 37

BOOK II

SOCIALISM AS A BELIEF

Chapter I. — The Foundations of our Beliefs . . .60

Chapter II. — Tradition as a Factor of Civilisation — The Limits

of Variability of the Ancestral Soul . . 73

Chapter III. — The Evolution of Socialism towards a Religious

Form ....... 85

xiv CONTENTS

BOOK III

SOCIALISM AS AFFECTED BY RACE

PAGE

Chapter I. — Socialism in Germany ..... 104

Chapter II. — Socialism in England and America . . . m

Chapter III. — Latin Socialism and the Psychology of the Latin

Peoples . . . . . ,126

Chapter IV.-— The Latin Conception of the State . . . 140

Chapter V. — The Latin Concepts of Education and Religion . 149

Chapter VI. — The Formation of Socialism among the Latin

Peoples ...... 167

Chapter VII. — The Present State of the Latin Peoples . , 191

BOOK IV

THE CONFLICT BETWEEN ECONOMIC NECESSITIES AND
THE ASPIRATIONS OF THE SOCIALISTS

Chapter I.^The Industrial and Economic Evolution of the

Present Age , . . . . . 213

Chapter II. — The Economic Struggles between the East and the

West ,..,.,. 221

Chapter III. — The Economic Struggles between the Western

Peoples ...... 239

Chapter IV. — Economic Necessities and the Growth of Populations 266

BOOK V

THE CONFLICT BETWEEN THE LAWS OF EVOLUTION,

THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL, AND THE ASPIRATIONS

OF THE SOCIALISTS

Chapter I. — The Laws of Evolution, the Democratic Ideal, and

the Aspirations of the Socialists . . . 277

Chapter II. — The Sources and Division of Wealth : Intelligence,

Capital, and Labour ..... 302

CONTENTS XV

PAGE

Chapter III.— The Conflict of Peoples and Classes . . .323

Chapter IV.— The Social Solidarity . . . . .341

Chapter v.— The Fundamental Problem of Socialism ; The

Unadapted ...... 358

Chapter VI.— The Struggle with the Unadapted . . 376

BOOK VI

THE DESTINIES OF SOCIALISM

Chapter I. — The Limits of Historical Prevision . . 384

Chapter II.— The Future of Socialism . . . . -395

BOOK I

THE SOCIALISTIC THEORIES AND THEIR DISCIPLES

CHAPTER I

THE VARIOUS ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM

I. The factors of social evolution : — Factors which direct the modern
evolution of societies — In what manner they differ from the ancient
factors — Economic factors — Psychological factors — Political factors.
2. The various aspects of Socialism : — The necessity of studying
Socialism as a political conception, as an economic conception,
as a philosophic conception, and as a belief — Conflict between these
various conceptions — Philosophical definition of Socialism — The Col-
lective Being and the Individual Being.

I. The Factors of Social Evolution.

CIVILISATIONS have always had, as their basis, a
certain small number of directing or controlling
ideas. When these ideas, after gradually waning, have
entirely lost their force, the civilisations which rest on
them are doomed to change."

We are to-day in the midst of one of those phases of
transition so rare in the history of the world. In the
course of the ages it has not been given to many philo-
sophers to live at the precise moment at which a new
idea shapes itself, and to be able to study, as we can
study to-day, the successive degrees of its crystallisation.

In the present condition of things the evolution of

2 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

societies is subject to factors of three orders : political,
economic, and psychological. These have existed in
every period, but the respective importance of each has
varied with the age of the nation.

The political factors comprise the laws and institu-
tions. Theorists of every kind, and above all the modern
Socialists, generally accord to these a very great import-
ance. They are persuaded that the happiness of a people
depends on its institutions, and that to change these is
at the same stroke to change its destinies. Some thinkers
hold, on the contrary, that institutions exercise but a very
feeble influence ; that the destiny of a nation is decreed
by its character ; that is to say, by the soul of the race.
This would explain why peoples possessing similar in-
stitutions, and living in identical environments, occupy
very different places in the scale of civilisation.

To-day the economic factors have an immense impor-
tance. Very feeble at a period when the nations lived in
isolation, when the divers industries hardly varied from
century to century, these factors have ended by acquiring
a pre-eminent influence. Scientific and industrial dis-
coveries have transformed all our conditions of existence.
A simple chemical reaction, discovered in a laboratory,
ruins one country and enriches another. The culture of
a cereal in the heart of Asia compels whole provinces
of Europe to renounce agriculture. The developments
of machinery revolutionise the life of a large proportion
of the civilised nations.

The factors of the psychological order, such as race,
beliefs, and opinions, have also a considerable import-
ance. Till quite lately their influence was preponderant,
but to-day the economic factors are tending to prevail.

It is especially in these changes of relation between the
directing factors to which they are subject that the
societies of to-day differ from those of the past.

THE VARIOUS ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 3

Dominated of old above all by faiths, they have since
become more and more obedient to economic neces-
sities.

The psychological factors are nevertheless far from
having lost their influence. The degree in which man
escapes the tyranny of economic factors depends on
his mental constitution ; that is to say, on his race ; and
this is why we see certain nations subject these economic
factors to their needs, while others allow themselves to
become more and more enslaved by them, and seek to
react on them only by laws of protection, which are
incapable of defending them against the formidable
necessities which rule them.

' Such are the principal motive forces of social evolution.
Their action is simultaneous, but often contradictory.
To ignore them, or to misconceive them, does not hinder
their action. The laws of nature operate with the blind
punctuality of clockwork, and he that offends them is
broken by their march.

2. The Various Aspects of Socialism.

This brief presentment already allows us to foresee that
Socialism offers to the view different facets, which we must
examine in succession. We must investigate Socialism as
a political conception, as an economic conception, as a
philosophic conception, and as a belief. We must also
consider the inevitable conflict between these various con-
cepts and the social realities ; that is, between the yet
abstract idea and the inexorable laws of nature which the
cunning of man cannot change.

The economic side of Socialism is that which best lends
itself to analysis. We find ourselves in the presence of
very clearly defined problems. How is wealth to be pro-
duced and divided ? What are the respective rdles of
labour, capital, and intelligence ? What is the mfluence

4 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

of economic facts, and to what extent can they be
adapted to the requirements of social evolution ?

If we consider Socialism as a belief, if we inquire into
the moral impression which it produces, the conviction
and the devotion which it inspires, the point of view is
very different, and the aspect of the problem is entirely
changed. We now no longer have to occupy ourselves
with the theoretic value of Socialism as a doctrine, nor
with the economic impossibilities with which it may
clash. We have only to consider the new faith in its
genesis, its moral progress, and its possible psychological
consequences. Then only does the fatuity of discussion
with its defenders become apparent. If the economists
marvel that demonstrations based on impeccable evi-
dence have absolutely no influence over those who hear
and understand them, we have only to refer them to the
history of all dogmas, and to the study of the psychology
of crowds. We have not triumphed over a doctrine when
we have shown its chimerical nature. We do not attack
dreams with argument ; nothing but recurring experience
can show that they are dreams.

, In order to comprehend the present force of Socia:lism
it must be considered above all as a belief, and we then
discover it to be founded on a very secure psychologic
basis. It matters very little to its immediate success that
it may be contrary to social and economic necessities.
The history of all beliefs, and especially of religious
beliefs, sufficiently proves that their success has most
often been entirely independent of the proportion of truth
that they might contain.

Having considered Socialism as a belief we must
examine it as a philosophic conception. This new facet
is the one its adepts have most neglected, and yet the very
one they might the best defend. They consider the
realisation of their doctrines as the necessary conse-

THE VARIOUS ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 5

quence of economic evolution, whereas it is precisely
this evolution that forms the most real obstacle. From
the point of view of pure philosophy — ^that is to say,
putting psychologic and economic necessities aside —
many of their theories are highly defensible.

What in effect is Socialism, speaking philosophically :
or, at least, what is its best-known form. Collectivism ?
Simply a reaction of the collective being against the
encroachments of the individual being. Now if we put
aside the interests of intelligence, and the possibly im-
mense utility of husbanding these interests for the
progress of civilisation, it is undeniable that collectivity
— if only by that law of the greater number which has
become the great credo of modern democracies — may be
considered as invented to subject to itself the individual
sprung from its loins, and who would be nothing without
it. For centuries, that is to say during the succession
of the ages which have preceded our own, collectivity
has always been all-powerful, at least among the Latin
peoples. The individual outside it was nothing. Per-
haps the French Revolution, the culmination of all the
doctrines of the eighteenth-century writers, represents
the first serious attempt at reaction of Individualism, but
in enfranchising the individual (at least theoretically), it
has also isolated him. In isolating him from his caste,
from his family, from the social or religious groups of
which he was a unit, it has left him delivered over to him-
self, and has thus transformed society into a mass of
individuals, without cohesion and without ties.

Such a work cannot have very lasting results. Only
the strong can support isolation, and rely only on them-
selves ; the weak are unable to do so. To isolation, and
the absence of support, they prefer servitude ; even painful
servitude. The castes and corporations destroyed by the
Revolution formed, of old, the fabric which served to

6 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

/

support the individual in life ; and it is evident that they
corresponded to a psychologic necessity, since they are
reviving on every hand under various names to-day, and
notably under that of trades-unions. These associations
permit the individual to reduce his efforts to a minimum,
while Individualism obliges him to increase his efforts to
the maximum. Isolated, the proletariat is nothing, and
can do nothing ; incorporated he becomes a redoubtable
force. If incorporation is unable to give him capacity
and intelligence it does at least give him strength, and
forbids him nothing but a liberty with which he would
not know what to do.

From the philosophic point of view, then. Socialism is
certainly a reaction of the collectivity against the indi-
vidual ; a return to the past. Individualism and Col-
lectivism are, in their general essentials, two opposing
forces, which tend, if not to annihilate, at least to paralyse
one another. In this struggle between the generally
conflicting interests of the individual and those of the
aggregate lies the true philosophic problem of Socialism.
The individual who is sufficiently strong to count only
on his own intelligence and initiative, and is therefore
highly capable of making headway, finds himself face to
face with the masses, feeble in initiative and intelligence,
but to whom their number gives might, the only upholder
of right. The interests of the two opposing parties are
conflicting. The problem is to discover whether they
can maintain without destroying themselves, at the price
of reciprocal concessions. Hitherto religion has suc-
ceeded in persuading the individual to sacrifice his
personal interests to those of his fellows only to replace
individual egoism by the collective egoism. But the old
religions are in sight of death, and those that must replace
them are yet unborn. In investigating the evolution
of the social solidarity we have to consider how far

THE VARIOUS ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 7

conciliation between the two contradictory principles is
allowed by economic necessities. As M. L6on Bourgeois
justly remarked in one of his speeches : " We can attempt
nothing against the laws of nature ; that goes without
saying ; but we must incessantly study them and avail
ourselves of them so as to diminish the chances of
inequality and injustice between man and man."

To complete our examination of the various aspects of
Socialism we must consider its variations in respect of
race. If those principles are true that I have set forth in
a previous work on the profound transformations under-
gone by all the elements of civilisation — institutions,
religions, arts, beliefs, etc. — in passing from one people
to another, we can already prophesy that, under the often
similar words which serve to denote the conceptions
formed by the various nations of the proper role of the
State, we shall find very different realities. We shall see
that this is so.

Among vigorous and energetic races which have arrived
at the culminating point of their development we observe
a considerable extension of what is confided to personal
initiative, and a progressive reduction of all that is left
to the State to perform ; and this is ti'ue of republics
equally with monarchies. We find a precisely opposite
part given to the State by those peoples among whom
the individual has arrived at such a degree of mental
exhaustion as no longer permits him to rely on his own
forces. For such -peoples, whatever may be the names
of their institutions, the Government is always a power
absorbing everything, manufacturing everything, and
controlling the least details of the citizen's life. Socialism
is only the extension of this concept. It would be a
dictatorship ; impersonal, but absolute.

We see now the complexity of the problems we must
encounter, but we see also how they resolve themselves into
simpler forms when their data are separately investigated.

CHAPTER II

THE ORIGIN OF SOCIALISM AND THE CAUSES OF ITS
PRESENT DEVELOPMENT

I. The antiquity of Socialism: — The social strug'gles engendered by the
inequaUty of conditions go back to the earliest historical ages — Col-
lectivist doctrines among the Greeks — How Socialism caused the
destruction of the Greek Independence — Socialism among the Romans
and the Jews — Primitive Christianity represents a period of triumph
for Socialism' — How it was quickly obliged to renounce the Socialistic
doctrines — The Socialistic illusions of fifty years ago. 2. The causes
of the present development of Socialism ; — The modern exaggeration of
sensibility — The upheavals and instability due to the progress of
industry — Needs have developed more quickly than the means of
satisfying them— The appetites of modern youth — University ideas —
The part played by financiers — The pessimism of thinkers — The
present state of societies compared to their state in the past. 3. The
percentage method in the appreciation of social phenomena : — Neces-
sity of establishing an exact relation between the useful and hurtful
elements entering into the composition of a society— Insufficiency of
the method of averages — Social phenomena are governed by percen-
tages, not by averages.

I. The Antiquity of Socialism.

SOCIALISM has not made its first appearance in the
world to-day. To use an expression dear to ancient
historians, we may say that its origins are lost in the
night of time ; for its prime cause is the inequality of
conditions, and this inequality was the law of the ancient
world, as it is that of the modern. Unless some all-
powerful deity takes it upon himself to re-fashion the

THE ORIGIN OF SOCIALISM 9

nature of man, this inequality is undoubtedly destined to
subsist until the final sterilisation of our planet. It
would seem that the struggle between rich and poor
must be eternal.

Without harking back to primitive Communism, a form
of inferior development from which all societies have
sprung, we may say that antiquity has experimented with
all the forms of Socialism that are proposed to us to-day.
Greece, notably, put them all into practice, and ended
by dying of her dangerous experiments. The Collectivist
doctrines were exposed long ago in the Republic of Plato.
Aristotle contests them, and as M. Guirand remarks,
reviewing their writings in his book on Landed Property
among the Greeks : " All the contemporary doctrines are
represented here, from Christian Socialism to the most
advanced Collectivism."

These doctrines were many times put into practice.
All the political revolutions in Greece were at the same
time social revolutions, or revolutions with the object of
changing the inequalities of conditions by despoiling the
rich and oppressing the aristocracy. They often suc-
ceeded, but their triumph was always ephemeral. The
final result was the Hellenic decadence, and the loss of
national independence. The Socialists of those days
agreed no better than the Socialists of these, or, at least,
agreed only to destroy : until Rome put an end to their
perpetual dissensions by reducing Greece to servitude.

The Romans themselves did not escape from the
attempts of the Socialists. They suffered the experimental
agrarian Socialism of the Gracchi, which limited the
territorial property of each citizen, distributed the surplus
among the poor, and obliged the State to nourish neces-
sitous citizens. Thence resulted the struggles which gave
rise to Marius, Sylla, the civil wars, and finally to the
ruin of the Republic and the domination of the Emperors.

10 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

The Jews also were familiar with the demands of the
Socialists. The imprecations of their prophets, the true
anarchists of their times, were above all imprecations
against riches. Jesus, the most illustrious of them,
asserted the right of the poor before everything. His
maledictions and menaces are addressed only to the rich ;
the Kingdom of God is reserved for the poor alone. " It
is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle
than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God."

During the first two or three centuries of our era the
Christian religion was the Socialism of the poor, the
disinherited, and the discontented ; and, like modern
Socialism, it was in perpetual conflict with the estab-
lished institutions. Nevertheless, Christian Socialism
ended by triumphing ; it was the first time that the
Socialistic ideas obtained a lasting success.

But although it possessed one immense advantage-
that of promising happiness only for a future life, and
therefore of certainty that it could never see its promises
disproved — Christian Socialism could maintain itself only
by renouncing its principles after victory. It was obliged
to lean on the rich and powerful, and so to become the
defender of the fortune and property it had formerly
cursed. Like all triumphant revolutionaries, it became
conservative in its turn, and the social ideal of Catholic
Rome was not very far removed from that of Imperial
Rome. Once more had the poor to content themselves
with resignation, labour, and obedience ; with a prospect
of heaven if they were quiet, and a threat of hell and
the devil if they harassed their masters. What a marvel-
lous story is this of this two thousand years' dream 1
When our descendants, freed from the heritages that
oppress our thoughts, are able to consider it from a
purely philosophical point of view, they will never tire
of admiring the formidable might of this gigantic Minerva

THE ORIGIN OF SOCIALISM ii

by which our civilisations are still propped up. How thin
do the most brilliant systems of philosophy show before
the genesis and growth of this belief, so puerile from a
rational point of view, and yet so powerful ! Its enduring
empire shows us well to what extent it is the unreal that
governs the world, and not the real. The founders of
religion have created nothing but hopes ; yet they are
their works that have lasted the longest. What Socialist
outlook can ever equal the paradises of Jesus and
Mahomet ? How miserable in comparison are the
perspectives of earthly happiness that the apostle of
Socialism promises us to-day !

They seem very ancient, all these historical events
which take us back to the Greeks, the Romans, and the
Jews ; but in reality they are always young, for always
they betray the laws of human nature, — that human
nature that as yet the course of ages has not changed.
Humanity has aged much since then, but she always
pursues the same dreams and suffers the same experi-
ences without learning anything from them. Let any
one read the declarations, full of hope and enthusiasm,
issued by our Socialists of fifty years ago, at the moment
of the revolution of 1848, of which they were. the most
valiant partisans. The new age was born, and, thanks
to them, the face of the world was about to be changed.
Thanks to them, their country sank into a despotism ;
and, a few years later, into a formidable war and invasion.
Scarcely half a century has passed since this phase of
Socialism, and already forgetful of this latest lesson we
are preparing ourselves to repeat the same round.

2. The Causes of the Present Development of
Socialism.

To-day, then, we are "merely repeating once more the
plaint that our fathers have uttered so often, and if our

12 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

cry is louder, it is because the progress of civilisation has
rendered our sensibility keener. Our conditions of exis-
tence are far better than of old ; yet we are less and
less satisfied. Despoiled of beliefs, and having no per-
spective other than that of austere duty and dismal
solidarity, disquieted by the upheavals and instability
caused by the transformations of industry, seeing all
social institutions crumble one by one, seeing family
and property menaced with extinction, the modern man
attaches himself eagerly to the present, the only reality
he can seize. Interested only in himself, he wishes at
all costs to rejoice in the present hour, of whose brevity
he is so sensible. In default of his lost illusions he must
enjoy well-being, and consequently riches. Wealth is
all the more necessary to him in that the progress of
industry and the sciences have created a host of luxuries
which were formerly unknown, but have to-day become
necessaries. The thirst for riches becomes more and more
general, while at the same time the number of those
amongst Avhom wealth is to be divided increases.

The needs of the modern man, therefore, have become
very great, and have increased far more rapidly than the
means of satisfying them. Statisticians prove that comfort
and convenience have never beeni so highly developed
as to-day, biit they show also that requirements have
never been so imperious. Now the equality of the two
terms in an equation only subsists when these two terms
progress equally. The ratio of requirements and the
means of satisfying them represents the equation of
happiness. When these two terms are equal, however
small they may be, the man is satisfied. He is also
satisfied when, the two terms being unequal by reason
of the insufficiency of the means of satisfaction, he is
able to re-establish equality by the reduction of his re-
quirements. Such a solution was discovered long ago

THE ORIGIN OF SOCIALISM 13

by the Orientals, and this is why we see them always
contented with their lot. In modern Europe, on the
other hand, requirements have increased enormously,
while the means of satisfying them have not kept up
with that increase. In consequence, the two terms of
the equation have become very unequal, and the greater
number of civilised men to-day are accustomed to curse
their lot. From top to bottom the discontent is the same,
because from top to bottom the requirements and means
of satisfying them are out of proportion. Every one
is drawn into the same tumultuous chase after Fortune,
and dreams of breaking through all the obstacles that
separate him from her. Individual egoism has increased
without a check on a basis of pessimistic indifference for
all doctrines and general interests. Wealth has become
the end that each desires, and this goal has obscured all
others.

Such tendencies are certainly not new to history, but
it would appear that of old they presented themselves in
a less general and less exclusive form. " The men of
the eighteenth century," says Tocqueville, "scarcely knew
this passion for well-being, which is, as it were, the
mother of servitude. In the higher classes men were
concerned far more to embellish their lives than to render
them comfortable, to become illustrious rather than
wealthy."

This universal pursuit of wealth has had as its inevi-
table corollary a general lowering of morality, and all the
ensuing consequences of this abatement. The most
clearly visible result has been an enormous decrease of
the prestige enjoyed by the middle classes in the eyes of
their social inferiors. Bourgeois society has aged as
much in a century as the aristocracy in a thousand
years. It becomes exhausted in less than three genera-
tions, and only renews itself by constant recruiting from

14 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

the classes below it. It may endow its sons with wealth,
but how can it endow them with the accidental qualities
that only centuries can implant ? Great fortunes are
substituted for great hereditary qualities, but these great
fortunes fall too often into lamentable hands.

Modern youth has shaken off all precedent, all pre-
judices. To it the ideas of duty, patriotism, and honour
seem too often ridiculous fetters, mere vain prejudices.
Educated exclusively in the cult of success, it exhibits
the most furious appetites and covetousness. When
speculation, intrigue, rich marriages, or inheritances put
fortunes into its hands, it consecrates them only to the
most vulgar delights.

The youth of our universities does not present a more
consoling spectacle. It is the melancholy product of our
classical education. Completely steeped in Latin ration-
alism, possessed of an education entirely theoretical and
bookish, it is incapable of understanding anything of the
realities of life, of the necessities which uphold the fabric
of society. The idea of the fatherland, without which no
nation can exist, seems to it, as an eminent critic, M.
Jules Lemaitre, wrote but recently, the conception " of
imbecile Jingoes completely devoid of philosophy." He
continues : —

" What are we to say to them ? They are great
reasoners, and expert in dialectic. Besides, it is not so
imperative to convince them by reasoning as to induce in
them a sentiment which they have always ignored.

" Some (I have heard them) declare that it is a matter
of indifference to them whether our political capital be at
Berlin or Paris, and that they would accept the just ad-
ministration of a German prefect with perfectly equal
minds. And I do not see what I can reply to them,
except that our hearts, our brains, are not fashioned alike.

" Others are patriots in a feeble way ; they detest war

THE ORIGIN OF SOCIALISM 15

on humanitarian principles, as one used to say fifty
years ago, and also because they dream of international
Socialism." ^ (La France exUrieure, May i, 1898.)

This demoralisation of all the strata of the bourgeoisie,
the too often dubious means they employ to obtain
wealth, and the scandals they provoke every day, are the
factors that have perhaps chiefly contributed to sow
hatred in the middle and lower classes of society. This
demoralisation has given a serious justification to the
diatribes of the modern Socialists against the unequal
partition of wealth. It has been only too easy for the
latter to show that the great fortunes of the present day
are too often based upon a gigantic rapine levied on the
modest resources of thousands of unhappy creatures.
How else are we to qualify such financial operations as
the foreign loans launched by great banking houses

' The very long-established antipathy entertained by many of our
university professors for the army and the fatherland obtains often
from the causes mentioned by M. Lemaitre, more often from the in-
capacity of theorists to understand the necessities of the organisation
and defence of societies, and very frequently from causes on which
it would be useless to insist here. This hatred of the army is often
dissimulated, but it bursts forth sometimes with a violence to which
witness is borne by the following lines, which were written by one
of our best-known university professors, and have recently been
quoted by numerous journals : —

"When we no longer see thousands of gabies at every military
review ; when, instead of admiring titles and epaulettes, you have
accustomed your child to say to itself : ' The uniform is a livery, and
all liveries are ignominious : that of the priest and that of the soldier,
that of the magistrate and that of the lackey ; ' then you will have
taken a step towards reason."

In an interesting article recently published by the Bibliotheque
universelle, M. Abel Veuglaire has very clearly shown how the out-
burst of passion let loose recently in France by a certain number of
university men was due to their hatred of the army. " It is against
the officers that the ' intellectuals ' have risen ; it is against them that
the movement has been directed." Let such sentinents propagate
themselves a little, and the societies in which they spread will submit
without resistance to Socialism, invasion, and slavery. It is the last
pillar of society that is being sapped to-day.

i6 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

perfectly informed of the affairs of the borrowers, per-
fectly sure that their too confident subscribers will be
ruined, but ruining them without hesitation in order to
touch commissions which sometimes, as in the case of the
Honduras loan, amount to more than 50 per cent, of the
total sum ? Is not the poor devil who, goaded by hunger,
steals your watch in the corner of the park, infinitely less
culpable in reality than these pirates of finance ? Again,
what are we to say of the "rings" of great capitalists,
who band themselves together to buy up all over the
world the whole products of some particular branch of
commerce — copper, for example, or petroleum — the result
of which operation is to double or treble the price of an
indispensable article, and to throw thousands of workmen
into idleness and misery ? What shall we say of specula-
tions like that of the young American millionaire who, at
the time of the Spanish-American war, bought at one
stroke all the corn obtainable in almost all the markets
of the world, to re-sell it only when the commencement
of the scarcity he had provoked had greatly increased the
price ? The affair should have brought him in four
million poimds ; but it provoked a crisis in Europe,
famine and riots in Spain and Italy, and plenty of poor
devils died of hunger. Are Socialists really in the wrong
when they compare the authoi^s of such speculations to
common pirates, and declare that they deserve the hang-
man's rope ?

The demoralisation of the upper strata of society, the
unequal and often very inequitable partition of wealth,
the increasing irritation of the masses, requirements
always greater than enjoyment, the waning of old hier-
archies and old faiths — there are in all these circumstances
plenty of reasons for discontent which go to justify the
rapid extension of Socialism.

The most distinguished spirits suffer from a malady not

THE ORIGIN OF SOCIALISM 17

less pronounced, although of a different nature. This
malady does not always transform them into partisans of
the new doctrines, but it prevents them from greatly inte-
resting themselves in the defence of the present social
State. The successive disintegration of all religious
beliefs, and of the institutions founded upon them ; the
total failure of science to throw any light on the mysteries
which surround us, and which only deepen when we seek
to sound them ; the only too evident proof that all our
systems of philosophy represent merely an empty and
useless farrago ; the universal triumph of brute force, and
the discouragement provoked by that triumph, have ended
by throwing even the elect into a gloomy pessimism.

The pessimistic tendencies of modern minds are incon-
testable ; it would be easy to compose a volume of the
phrases in which our writers express them. The follow-
ing extracts will suffice to illustrate this general disorder
of the mind : —

" As for the picture of the sufferings of humanity," says
one of our most distinguished contemporary philosophers,
M. Renouvier, "without speaking of the ills that appertain
to the general laws of the animal kingdom, it is enough
to make Schopenhauer pass as mild to-day, rather than
excessively gloomy, if we think of the social phenomena
which characterise our epoch, the war of nations, the war
of classes, the universal extension of militarism, the in-
crease of extreme misery, parallel with the development
of great wealth and the refinements of the life of pleasure,
the forward march of criminality, often hereditary as
much as professional, the increase of suicide, the relaxa-
tion of family ties and the abandonment of supramundane
beliefs which are being gradually replaced by the sterile
materialistic cult of the dead. All these signs of a visible
retrogression of civilisation towards barbarism, which the
contact of Americans and Europeans with the stationary

3

i8 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

or decadent populations of the old world cannot fail to
augment — all these signs had not yet made their appear-
ance at the time when Schopenhauer gave the signal for
the return of the mind to pessimistic judgment of the
world's merits."

"The strongest trample on the rights of the weakest
without shame," writes another philosopher, M. Boilley ;
"the Americans exterminate the Redskins, the English
oppress the Hindoos. Under the pretext of civilisation
the European nations are dividing Africa amongst them-
selves, but in reality are only concerning themselves
to open new markets. The jealousy between Power
and Power has assumed unheard-of proportions. The
Triple Alliance threatens us by fear and by covetous-
ness. Russia comes to us through interest."

The abuse of the right of the strongest is incontestable,
as are also the iniquities of society. To these iniquities
we must add all the social lies to which we are forced to
submit, and which are well reviewed by M. de Vogiid in
the following lines : —

" Lies of faces, lies of hearts ; lies of thoughts, lies of
words ; lies of false glory, false talent, false money, false
names, false opinions, false loves ; lies in all things, and
even in the best ; in art, in thought, in sentiment, in the
public welfare, because to-day these things no longer
have their end in themselves, because they are nothing
but the means of obtaining fame and lucre."

Without question our civilisations are founded upon
lies enough, but if we wish to extirpate these lies we must
at the same blow destroy all the elements they support,
and notably religion, diplomacy, commerce, and love.
What would become of the relations between individuals
and between peoples if the lies of faces and words did
not dissemble the real sentiments of our hearts ? He
who hates falsehood must live solitary and ignored. As

THE ORIGIN OF SOCIALISM 19

for the young man who wishes to make his way in the
world, as we understand the matter to-day, the most
important advice one can give him is that he should
studiously cultivate the art of lying skilfully.

Hatred and envy in the lower classes, intense egoism
and the exclusive cult of wealth in the directing classes,
pessimism among thinkei^s : such are. the general modern
tendencies. A society must be very solidly established to
resist such causes of dissolution. It is doubtful if it can
resist them long. Some philosophers console themselves
for this state of general discontent by arguing that it
constitutes a factor of progress, and that peoples too well
satisfied with their lot, such as the Orientals, progress
no further.

Easy as it may be to raise up these hopes and demands
against the actual state of things, it must be conceded that
all these social iniquities seem inevitable, since they have
always existed. They seem to be the inevitable results of
human nature, and no experience gives us leave to think
that by changing our institutions, and substituting one
kind for another, we should be able to abolish, or even
lessen, the iniquities of which we complain so greatly
The army of virtuous men has always numbered but
few soldiers, and far fewer officers, and we have scarcely
discovered the means of augmenting the number. We
must therefore rank social iniquities with those natural
iniquities, such as age and death, to whose yoke we must
submit, and against which all recriminations are vain.

In short, if we resent our misfortunes more keenly than
of old, it would nevertheless seem that they have never
been lighter. Without going back to the ages when man,
taking refuge in the depths of caverns, painfully contested
with the beasts for his meagre fare, and often served them
as food, let us recall that our fathers knew slavery, inva-
sion, famine, war of all kinds, murderous epidemics, the

20 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

Inquiskion, the Terror, and many another misery still.
Do not let us forget that, thanks to the progress of science
and industry, to higher rates of wage and increased cheap-
ness of articles of luxury, the most humble individual lives
to-day with more comfort than a feudal gentleman of old
in his manor, always menaced as he was with pillage and
destruction by his neighbours. Thanks to steam, electri-
city, and all the other modern discoveries, the poorest of
peasants is possessed of a host of commodities that Louis
Quatorze in all his pomp never knew.

3. The Percentage Method in the Appreciation
OF Social Phenomena.

To form just and equitable judgments on a given
social environment we must consider not only those
evils which touch ourselves, or those injustices which
clash with our own sentiments. Every society contains
a certain proportion of good and bad, a certain number _
of virtuous men and of scoundrels, of men of genius and
of mediocre or imbecile men. To compare, across the
ages, one society with another, we must not only consider
their component elements separately, but also their
respective proportions one to another ; that is to say, the
percentage of these elements. We must put aside the
particular cases which strike us and deceive us, and the
averages of the statisticians, which deceive us yet more.
Social phenomena are determined by percentages, and not
by particular cases or by averages.

The greater part of our errors of judgment, and the
hasty generalisations resulting therefrom, spring from an
insufficient knowledge of the percentage of the elements
observed. The habitual tendency, a characteristic one in
partially developed minds, is to generalise from particular
cases without considering in what proportion they exist.

THE ORIGIN OF SOCIALISM 21

We are like the traveller, who, being attacked by thieves
while passing through a forest, affirmed that this forest
was habitually infested with brigands, without ever
dreaming of inquiring how many other travellers, and in
how many years, had previously been attacked.

A strict application of the method of percentages will
teach us to avoid these hasty generalisations. The
judgments we pronounce upon a people or a society
are only of value when they deal with a number of indi-
viduals so large as to allov/ of our knowing in what pro-
portions the qualities or faults in question exist. Only
from such data are generalisations possible. For instance,
if we state that a certain people is characterised by enter-
prise and energy, we do not by any means say that there
may not be among this people individuals completely
destitute of such qualities, but simply that the percentage
of individuals so gifted is considerable. If it were
possible to substitute figures for this clear, yet vague,
"considerable," the value of our judgment would be
greatly enhanced ; but in evaluations of this kind we
must, in default of sufficiently sensible reagents, content
ourselves with approximations. Sensible reagents are
not altogether wanting, but they require very delicate
handling.

This idea of percentages is important. It was after
introducing this method into anthropology that I was
able to show the profound cerebral differences that
separate the various human races — differences which the
method of averages could never have established. What
until then did we find in comparing the average cranial
capacity of the divers races ? Differences which were
really insignificant, and which tended to make one believe,
as indeed the majority of anatomists did believe, that
the cranial volume of all the races was almost identical.
By means of certain curves, giving the exact percentage

22 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

of different capacities, I was able, by taking data from a
considerable number of skulls, to demonstrate unques-
tionably that, on the contrary, cranial capacity varies
enormously according to race, and that the fact which
clearly distinguishes the superior from the inferior races
is that the former possess a certain number of large
skulls and the latter do not. By reason of their small
number these large skulls do not affect averages. This
anatomical demonstration also confirms the psychological
notion that the intellectual level of a nation is determined
by the greater or less number of the eminent minds it
contains.

The methods of investigation employed in the obser-
vation of sociological facts are as yet too imperfect to
permit the application of such methods of exact evalua-
tion as allow us to translate phenomena into geometric
curves. Unable as we are to see all the aspects of a
question, we must none the less bear in mind that these
facets are very diverse, and that there are many which we
do not suspect or comprehend. But it is often the case
that these less visible elements are precisely the more
important. In order to form not too erroneous judg-
ments upon complex problems — and all sociological
problems are complex — we must revise our judgments
unceasingly, by a series of verifications and successive
approximations, while endeavouring absolutely to put
aside our own interests and preferences. We must con-
sider long before concluding, and more often than not
we must confine ourselves to considering. These are
not the principles which have been applied heretofore by
writers who have treated of Socialism, and this doubtless
is the reason why the influence of their work has been
equally feeble and ephemeral.

CHAPTER III

THE THEORIES OF SOCIALISM

I. The Fundamental principles of the Socialist theories : — ^The theories of
Socialism revert to Collectivism and Individualism — These opposing
principles have always been in conflict. 2. Individualistn ; — The
part played by it in the evolution of civilisations — Its development is
possible only among peoples endowed with certain qualities —
Individualism and the Revolution. 3. Collectivism : — All the con-
temporary forms of Socialism demand the intervention of the State —
The role which Collectivism reserves for the State — The absolute
dictatorship of the State or the community in Collectivism — ^The
antipathy of Socialists for liberty — How the CoUectivists hope to
ai'rive at the suppression of inequahties — The common factor of all the
programmes of the various Socialistic sects — Anarchism and its
doctrine — The programmes of the modern Socialists are very old.
4. The Socialistic ideas of nations, like the various institutions of
nations, are the consequence of their race : — Importance of the idea
of race — The great difference of the social and political concepts
harboured by the same words — Nations cannot change their insti-
tutions of their own free will, and can only modify the terms by
which they denote them — The differences between the Socialistic
concepts of writers belonging to different races.

I. The Fundamental Principles of the Socialist
Theories.

TO investigate the political and social concepts of the
theorists of Socialism would be a proceeding of
very little interest, if by so doing we did not often arrive
at those conceptions which are in sympathy with the
spirit of a period, and for this reason produce a certain
impression on the general mind. If, as I have so often

23

24 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

maintained, and as I propose to show once more, the
institutions of a people are the consequences of its
inherited mental organisation, and not the product of
the philosophical theories created on every hand, the
small importance of Utopias and speculative consti-
tutions can readily be conceived. But that which the
philosophers and orators effect in their imaginings is
often nothing other than to invest with a tangible form
the unconscious aspirations of their time and race. The
few writers who have really influenced the world by their
books, such as Adam Smith in England,- and Rousseau in
France, have merely condensed, into clear and intelligible
form, the ideas which were already spreading on every
hand. They did not create what they expressed. Only
the remoteness of their time can delude us on this
point.

If we limit the diverse concepts of the Socialists to the
fundamental principles on which they repose the investi-
gation will be very brief.

The modern theories of social organisation, under all
their apparent diversity, lead back to two different and
opposing fundamental principles — Individualism and
Collectivism. By Individualism man is abandoned to
himself ; his initiative is carried to a maximum, and that
of the State to a minimum. By Collectivism a man's
least actions are directed by the State, that is to say, by
the aggregate ; the individual possesses no initiative ; all
the acts of his life are mapped out. The two principles
have always been more or less in conflict, and the
development of modern civilisation has rendered this
conflict more keen than ever. Neither has any intrinsic
or absolute value of itself, but each must be judged
according to the time, and above all the race, in which
it manifests itself ; and this we shall see in the course of
this book.

THE THEORIES OF SOCIALISM 25

2. Individualism.

All that has gone to make the greatness of civilisations ;
sciences, arts, philosophies, religions, military power, etc.,
has been the work of individuals and not of aggregates.
It is by favoured individuals, the rare and supreme fruits
of a few superior races, that the most important dis-
coveries and advances, by which all humanity profits,
have been realised. The peoples among whom Indi-
vidualism is most highly developed are by this fact alone
at the head of civilisation, and to-day dominate the
world.

It is only in our days, and above all since the Revo-
lution, that Individualism, at least under certain forms,
has at all developed among the Latin races. These
peoples are unfortunately but little adapted, by their
ancestral qualities, their institutions, and their education,
to rely upon themselves or to govern themselves.
Extremely eager for equality, they have always shown
themselves very little anxious for liberty. Liberty is
competition and incessant conflict, the mother of all
progress, in which only the most capable can triumph,
and the weakest, as in nature, are condemned to
annihilation.

The Revolution has been reproached with having
developed Individualism of an exaggerated kind ; but this
reproach does not seem just. It is a far cry from the
form of Individualism which the Revolution has made
prevalent to the Individualism practised by the Anglo-
Saxons, for example, amongst other nations. The revo-
lutionary ideal was to shatter the classes and corpora-
tions, to reduce every individual to a common type, and
to aljsorb all these individuals, thus dissociated from
their categories, into the guardianship of a strongly
centralised State. Nothing could be more strongly

26 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

opposed to the Anglo-Saxon Individualism, which
favours the banding together of individuals, obtains
everything by it, and confines the action of the State
within narrow limits. The work of the Revolution was
far less revolutionary than is generally believed. By
exaggerating the absorption and centralisation of the
State it only continued in a Latin tradition deeply rooted
through centuries of monarchy, and followed by all
governments alike. By dissolving the industrial, political,
rehgious, and other corporations, it has made this absorp-
tion and centralisation still more complete, and, more-
over, by so doing, has obeyed the inspirations of all the
philosophers of the period.

The development of Individualism,, as its necessary
consequence, leaves the individual isolated amidst the
competition of eager appetites. Young and vigorous
races, such as the Anglo-Saxon, in which the mental
inequalities between individuals are not too great,
accommodate themselves very well to such a state of
things. The Anglo-Saxon and American workers are
perfectly able, by means of trades-unions, to contend
with the demands of capitalism, and to escape its
tyranny. Every interest has thus been able to establish
itself. But among older races, whose initiative has been
exhausted by their systems of education and the march
of time, the consequences of individualism have ended
by becoming severe in the extreme.

The philosophers of the last century, and the Revo-
lution, in breaking or trying to break up all the
religious and social ties which served as a support
to man, and which were established on a solid basis,
whether that basis were the Church, family, caste,
guild, or corporation, certainly thought to effect
a thoroughly democratic work. What they really
favoured, without foreseeing it, was the birth of an

THE THEORIES OF SOCIALISM 27

aristocracy of financiers of formidable power, reigning
over a mob of individuals possessing neither cohesion
nor defence. The feudal seigneur did not use his serfs
more hardly than the modern industrial seigneur, the
king of a workshop, sometimes uses his mercenaries.
Theoretically the latter enjoy every liberty ; theoretically,
again, they are the equals of their master. Practically
they feel weighing on them the heavy chains of misery
and dependence, in menace if not in fact.

The idea of remedying the unforeseen consequences of
the Revolution was bound to germinate, and the adver-
saries of Individualism have had no lack of sound pretexts
for attacking it. It was easy for them to maintain that
the social organism was of greater importance than the
individual organism, and most often strongly opposed to
it, and that the latter must give way before the former ;
that the weak and incapable have a right to be protected,
and that the inequalities created by nature must be
corrected by a new partition of wealth made by society
itself. Thus was born the Socialism of the present day,
the offspring of the ancient Socialism, and which, like the
old, wishes to change the division of wealth by depriving
the rich for the benefit of the poor.

Theoretically, the means of annihilating social in-
equalities are very simple. The State has only to
intervene and proceed to the distribution of wealth, and
to establish in perpetuity the equilibrium destroyed for
the profit of the few. From this idea, so little novel and
yet so seductive, have issued the Socialistic concepts of
which we are about to treat.

3. Collectivism.

Modern Socialism presents itself in a number of forms
greatly differing in detail. By their general charac-
teristics they rank themselves under the head of CoUec-

28 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

tivism. All would invariably have recourse to the State
to repair the injustice of destiny, and to proceed to the
re-distribution of wealth. Their fundamental propositions
have at least the merit of extreme simplicity : confiscation
by the State of capital, mines, and property, and the
administration and re-distribution of the public wealth
by an immense army of functionaries. The State, or the
community, if you will — for the Collectivists now no
longer use the word State — would manufacture everything,
and permit no competition. The least signs of initiative,
individual liberty, or competition, would be suppressed.
The country would be nothing else than an immense
monastery subjected to a strict discipline. The inheri-
tance of property being abolished, no accumulation
of fortune would be possible.

As for the needs of the individual. Collectivism scarcely
regards anything else than his alimentary necessities, and
only occupies itself with satisfying them. M. Rouanet,
cited by M. Boilley, writes as follows : —

" According to the Marxist explanation the necessities
of nutrition are at the summit as well as at the base of
human development. Humanity would be at the end, as
at the beginning, a stomach. Nothing but an enormous
stomach, whose physical necessities would constitute the
sole motive of all mental activities. The stomach would
be the prime cause and the end of humanity. As a
Marxist has maintained, Socialism is in effect nothing
but the rehgion of the stomach."

It is evident that such a riginte implies the absolute
dictatorship of the State, or, what comes to exactly the
same thing, of the community, with regard to the distri-
bution of wealth, and a no less absolute servitude on the
part of the workers. But the latter are not affected by
this argument. They are not at all eager for liberty,
as is proved by the enthusiasm with which they have

THE THEORIES OF SOCIALISM 29

acclaimed all the Caesars when a Caesar has arisen ; and
they care as little for all that goes to make the greatness
of a civilisation : for arts, sciences, literature, and so forth,
which would disappear at once in such a society ; so that
the Collectivist doctrine has nothing in it that could seem
antipathetic to them.

In exchange for their rations, which the theorists of
Socialism promise him, " the worker would perform his
work under the surveillance of State functionaries, like so
many convicts under the eye and hand of the warder.
All individual motive would be stifled, and each worker
would rest, sleep, and eat at the bidding of headmen put
in authority over matters of food, work, recreation, and
the perfect equality of all."

All stimulus being destroyed, no one would make an
effort to ameliorate or to escape from his position. It
would be slavery of the gloomiest kind, without a hope of
enfranchisement. Under the domination of the capitalist
the worker can at least dream of becoming, and some-
times does become, a capitalist in his turn. What dream
could he indulge in under the anonymous and brutally
despotic tyranny of a levelling State which should foresee
all his needs and direct his will ? M. Bourdeau has
remarked that the Collectivist organisation would be very
like that of the Jesuits of Paraguay. Would it not
resemble rather the organisation of the negroes on the
old slave-plantations ?

Blinded as they are by their di'eams, and convinced
though they be of the superiority of institutions over
economic laws, the more intelligent of the Socialists have
been obliged to understand that the great objections to
their system are those terrible natural equalities against
which no amount of recrimination has ever been able to
prevail. Except there were each generation a systematic
massacre of all individuals surpassing by however little

30 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

the lowest imaginable average, social inequality, the child
of mental inequality, would quickly re-establish itself.

The theorists meet this objection by assuring us that,
in the new social environment thus artificially created,
individual capacity would quickly equalise itself, and that
the stimulant of personal interest, which has hitherto
been the great motive of human nature and the source of
all progress, would become useless, and would be replaced
by the sudden formation of altruistic instincts which
would lead the individual to devote himself to the Col-
lective interest. It cannot be denied that religions, at
least during the short periods of ardent belief ensuing
on their birth, have obtained some analogous result ; but
they had Heaven to offer to their believers, with an
eternal life of rewards, while the Socialists propose to
their disciples, in exchange for the sacrifice of their
liberty, only a hell of servitude and hopeless baseness.

To suppress the effects of natural inequality is theoreti-
cally an easy thing, but to suppress these inequalities
themselves will always be impossible. They, with death
and age, form a part of these eternal fatalities to which a
man must submit himself.

But so long as we keep within the frontiers of dream-
land it is easy to promise all ; easy, like the Prometheus
of ^schylus, " to make blind hopes inhabit mortal souls."
So man will change to adapt himself to the new society
created by the Socialists. The differences that divide
individual from individual will disappear, and we shall
have only the average type so well described by the
mathematician Bertrand : " Without passions or vices,
neither mad nor wise, with average ideas, average
opinions, he will die at an average age, of an average
malady invented by the statisticians."

The methods of realisation proposed by the various
Socialist sects differ in form, though all tending to a

THE THEORIES OF SOCIALISM 31

common end. They aim finally at obtaining an
immediate State monopoly of the soil, and of wealth in
general, either by simple decree or by enormously in-
creasing the death duties, so as to lead to the suppression
of family property in a few generations.

The enumeration of the programmes and theories of
these various sects would be without interest, for at
present Collectivism prevails over them all, and alone
exerts any influence. Most of them have dropped into
oblivion ; " in this manner Christian Socialism, which
was pre-eminent in 1848, now marches in the rear," as
L6on Say justly remarks. As for State Socialism, only
its name has changed ; it is nothing else than the Collec-
tivism of to-day.

It has with reason been said of Christian Socialism that
it meets the modern doctrines at many points. " Like
Socialism," writes M. Bourdeau, "the Church allows no
merit to anything that partakes of genius, talent, grace,
originality, or personal gift. Individualism, for the
Church, is the synonym of egoism ; and that which it has
always sought to impose on the world is precisely the
end of Socialism : fraternity under authority. The same
international organisation, the same reprobation of war,
the same sentiments as to suffering and social necessities.
According to Bebel it is the Pope who, from the heights
of the Vatican, sees most clearly the gathering storm
which is upheaving itself upon the horizon. The Papacy
might even be in danger of becoming a dangerous com-
petitor with revolutionary Socialism if it were resolutely
to place itself in the van of the universal democracy."

To-day the programme of the Christian Socialists differs
very little from that of the Collectivists. But the other
Socialists repudiate them in their hatred of all religious
ideas, and if revolutionary Socialism were to triumph the
Christian Socialists would assuredly be its first victims.

32 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

Assuredly also they would find no one to take pity on
their fate.

Among the various sects that are born and die every
day Anarchism deserves to be mentioned. Theoretically
the Anarchists appear to come under the heading of
Individualists, since they desire to allowr the individual
an unlimited liberty ; but in practice we must consider
them as merely the Extreme Left of the Socialist party,
for they are equally intent on the destruction of the
present social system. Their theories are characterised
by that extreme simplicity which is the keynote of all
Socialist Utopias : " Society is worthless ; let us destroy
it by steel and fire ! " Thanks to the natural instincts of
man they will form a new society, of course perfect. By
what train of astonishing miracles would the new society
differ from those that have preceded it ? That is what no
Anarchist has ever told us. It is evident, on the contrary,
that if the present civilisations were to be completely
destroyed, humanity would once again pass through all
the forms it has, perforce, successively outgrown ;
savagery, slavery, barbarism, etc. One does not very
well see what the Anarchists would gain by this.
Admit the immediate realisation of all their dreams ; that
is to say, the execution of all the bourgeois en bloc, the
reunion of all capital in one immense heap, to which
every man can resort as he wills : how will this heap
renew itself when it has become exhausted, and all the
Anarchists have become momentary capitalists in their
turn ?

Be it as it may, the Anarchists and the Collectivists are
the only sects possessing any influence to-day. The
Collectivists imagine their theories were created by the
German Karl Marx. As a matter of fact, we find them in
detail in the writers of antiquity. Without going back so

THE THEORIES OF SOCIALISM 33

far, we may remark with Tocqueville, who wrote more than
fifty years ago, that all the Socialist theories are exposed
at length in the Code de la Nature, published by Morelly
in 1755-

'' You will there find, together with all the doctrines
asserting the omnipotence of the State and its unlimited
rights, several of the political theories by which France
has been most frightened of late, and whose birth we
flatter ourselves to have witnessed : the community of
goods, the right to work, absolute equality, uniformity in
everything, mechanical regularity in all the movements
of the individual, regulated tyranny, and the complete
absorption of the personality of the citizen into the iDody
of society :

" ' In this society nothing will belong to any person as
his personal property,' says Article i of the Code. ' Every
citizen will be fed, maintained, and occupied at the
expense of the public,' says Article 2. ' All products will
be amassed in the public magazines, thence to be distri-
buted to all citizens and to supply their vital need. At
five years of age every child will be taken from his family
and educated in common, at the expense of the State, in
a uniform manner,' etc."

4. The Socialistic Ideas of Nations, like the
VARIOUS Institutions of Nations, are the Conse-
quence OF their Race.

The Racial idea, so little understood a few years
ago, is becoming more and more widely spread, and is
tending to dominate all our historical, political, and
social concepts.!

" The significance of race, which to-day one might have thought
to be an axiom of the most elementary kind, is nevertheless still
perfectly incomprehensible to numbers of persons. Thus we find
M. Novikoff uphold in a recent work " the small importance of race

4

34 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

I dedicated my penultimate work i to showing how the
various peoples, mingled and united by the hazard of
migration or conquest, came to form the nations known
to history, the only ones existing to-day ; for pure races,
anthropologically speaking, are scarcely to be found
except among savages. This idea being thoroughly
established, I indicated the limits of variation of character
among these races ; that is to say, how variable and
mobile characteristics become superimposed upon a fixed
substratum. I then demonstrated that all the elements
of a civilisation — language, arts, customs, institutions,
beliefs— were the consequences of a certain mental consti-
tution, and therefore could not pass from one nation to
another without undergoing profound transformations.

It is the same with Socialism ; this law of transforma-
tion being general, Socialism also must be subject to it.
Despite the deceptive labels which in politics, as in reli-
gion and morals, often cover very dissimilar things, there
are often hidden behind identical words very different
social or political concepts, just as the same concept is
often sheltered by very different words. Some Latin
nations Hve under monarchies, some under republics, but
imder these constitutions, so nominally opposed, the politi-
cal rdle of the State and the individual remains the same,

in human affairs.'' He believes the negro can easily become the
equal of the white man, &c.

Such assertions only show us how, in the author's own words,
" in the domain of sociology people still content themselves with
declamatory phrases instead of making a careful study of facts."
All that M. Novikoff does not understand he qualifies by contra-
diction, and the authors who do not think with him are classed as
pessimists. This kind of psychology is easy, to be sure, but it is
equally elementary. To admit "the small importance of race in
human affairs" we must absolutely ignore the history of San
Domingo, of Hayti, of the twenty-two Spanish-American republics,
and of the United States. To misunderstand the part played by
race is to condemn oneself forever to misunderstand history.

' The Psychology of Peoples,

THE THEORIES OF SOCIALISM 35

and represents the invariable ideal of the race. Be the
nominal government of a Latin people what it may, the
action of the State will always be preponderant, and that
of the private person very small. Among the Anglo-
Saxons the same constitution, republic or monarchy,
realises absolutely the opposite of the Latin ideal.
Instead of being carried to a maximum, the rdle of the
State is with them reduced to a minimum, while the
political or social part "reserved for private initiative
reaches, on the contrary, a maximum.

From the preceding facts it results that the nature of
institutions plays a very small part in the life of nations.
It will probably be several centuries before such a notion
can penetrate the popular imagination ; but only when it
has done so will the futility of constitutions and revolu-
tions clearly appear. Of all the errors that history has
given birth, the most disastrous, that which has uselessly
shed the most blood, and heaped up the greatest ruin, is
this idea that a people, that any people, can change its
institutions as it pleases. All that it can do is to change
the names of its institutions, to clothe with new words
old conceptions, which represent the natural outcome of
a long past.

The foregoing assertions can be justified only by
examples, and I have furnished several in my preceding
works ; but the study of Socialism among the various
races, to which part of the ensuing chapters will be
dedicated, will present us with many others. I shall
show, first of all, by taking a given nation, how the
advent of Socialism has been prepared in that nation
by the mental constitution and history of its race. We
shall then see how it is that Socialistic doctrines have
been unable to succeed among other peoples of different
race.
In order to discover to what extent our social concep-

36 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

tions are truly the resultants of race one might even confine
oneself to comparing the works of the Socialist writers of
various races. The most eminent of English Socialist
writers (Herbert Spencer, for example), are partisans of
the liberty of the citizen and the limitation of the rdle of
the State. The Socialist writers of Latin race profess, on
the contrary, a perfect disdain of liberty, and invariably
clamour for extended action on the part of the State,
and the utmost State regulation. One must run through
the works of all the theorists of Latin race — those of
Auguste Comte, for example — in order to see to what
extent the disdain of liberty and the desire to be governed
may be carried. " The energetic preponderance of a
central power " appeared indispensable to the latter. The
State must intervene in all questions economic, industrial,
and moral. The people have no rights, but only duties.
It must be directed by a dictatorial Government com-
posed of scientists, having at their head an absolute
Positivist Pope. Stuart Mill said with reason of these
conceptions that they formed the most complete system
of spiritual and temporal despotism that had ever issued
from the brain of man, except perhaps from that of Ignatius
Loyola. Of all modern conquests the most precious was
liberty. How much longer shall we keep it ?

CHAPTER IV

THE DISCIPLES OF SOCIALISM AND THEIR MENTAL STATE

I. The Classification of the disciples of Socialism : — What the different cate-
gories of Socialists have in common — The necessity of studying
separately the different sects of Socialists. 2. The working classes : —
Divided into artisans and labourers — The differences of the Socialistic
idea in these two classes — Psychology of the Parisian workman — His
intelligence and independent spirit — His superiority over the class of
clerks, etc. — Impulsive and imprudent character of the workman^
His artistic sense — His conservative instincts — His sociability and
lack of egoism — Simplicism of his political opinions — What the
Government represents to him — The Parisian working classes will be
the most refractory towards the adoption of Socialism. 3. Directing
classes: — Progress of sentimental Socialism among the educated
classes — Causes of this progress — Influence of contagion, fear, scepti-
cism and indifference. 4. The demi-savant and the doctrinaires : —
How one may be a demi-savant although highly educated. The demi-
savant who has formed himself on books is always a stranger to the
realities that surround him — Rapid development of Socialism among
the demi-savants — The regrettable part played by the Universities
and University men — The doctrinaires — Their elementary and obtuse
nature.

I. The Classification of the Disciples of
Socialism.

SOCIALISM comprises many strongly differing and
sometimes strongly contradictory theories. The
army of its disciples have scarcely anything in common,
save an intense antipathy for the present state of things,
and vague aspirations towards a new ideal, which is
destined to procm-e them better conditions, and to replace
the old ideals. Although all the soldiers of this army
appear to be marching togetlier towards the destruction

37

38 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

of the inheritance of the past, they are animated by
strongly differing sentiments. It is only by examining
separately their principal sects that we can attain to at
all a clear idea of their psychology, and hence of their
receptivity towards the new doctrines.

At first sight Socialism would appear to draw the
greater number of its recruits from the popular classes,
and more especially from the working classes. The new
ideal presents itself to them in this very elementary, and,
therefore, very comprehensible shape : less work and
more pleasure. In place of an uncertain salary, an often
miserable old age, and the slavery of the workshop or
factory, often very hard, they are promised a regenerated
society in which, thanks to a re-distribution of riches by
the omnipotence of the State, work will be thoroughly
distributed, and very light.

It would seem as though the popular classes could not
hesitate in the face of promises so enticing, and so often
repeated : above all, when they hold all the reins in their
hands, thanks to universal suffrage and the right to
choose their legislators. Yet they do hesitate. The most
astonishing thing to-day is not the rapidity, but the slow-
ness with which the new doctrines propagate themselves.
To understand the unequal influence of these doctrines
in different environments it is imperative to study the
various categories of Socialists as we are now about to do.

We shall examine, from this point of view, the following
classes in turn : the working classes, the directing classes,
the demi-savants, and the doctrinaires.

2. The Working Classes.

The psychology of the working classes differs too
greatly in respect of their particular trades, provinces,
and surroundings, to be exposed in detail. It would

THE DISCIPLES OE SOCIALISM 3^

demand, moreover, a very long and laborious study, to
which great faculties of observation would be necessary,
and for these reasons probably it has never been
attempted.

In this chapter, therefore, I shall concern myself only
with one class of workers, the only one I have been able
to study at all closely : the class of Parisian workmen.
The subject is one of peculiar interest in that our revolu-
tions always take place in Paris, and are possible or
impossible as their leaders have or have not at their backs
the working classes of Paris.

This interesting class evidently contains many varieties :
but, in the manner of a naturalist who describes the
general characteristics of a genera proper to all the
species comprised in that genera, shall deal only with
the general characteristics common to the greater number
of the observed varieties.

But there is one division which we must clearly define
at the outset, that we may not unite elements too dis-
similar. We find in the working classes two well-defined
subdivisions, each with a different psychology — the
labourers and the artisans.

The class of labourers is the inferior as regards intelli-
gence, but also the more numerous. It is the direct
product of machinery, and is growing every day. The
perfecting of machinery tends to render work more and
more automatic, and consequently reduces, more and
more, the quantum of intelligence necessary to perform
it. The duty of a factory or workshop hand comprises
hardly anything more than superintending the I'unning
of a thread, or feeding machines with sheets of metal
that are bent, stamped, and sheared automatically. Cer-
tain everyday articles — for example, the cheap lanterns
which are sold for twopence-halfpenny, and serve to light
up the ditches — are made up of fifty pieces, each made

40 tHE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

by its special workman, who does nothing else all his life.
As he performs an easy work he is inevitably ill paid, the
more so as he is competing with women and children
equally capable of performing the same task. As he does
not know how to do anything but this one task, he is
necessarily completely dependent on the manufacturer
who employs him.

The class of labourers is the class that Socialism can
most surely count on ; firstly, because it is the least
intelligent, and secondly because it is the least happy,
and is inevitably enamoured of all the doctrines that
promise to better its condition. It will never take the
initiative in a revolution, but it will follow all revolutions
with docility.

At the side of, or rather very far above this class
of workers, we have that of the artisans. It comprises
the workers occupied in the building and engineering
trades, in the industrial arts and minor industries —
carpenters, cabinet-makers, fitters, electro-platers, foundry
hands, electricians, painters, decorators, masons, &c.
These have every day to undertake a new task, to over-
come difficulties which oblige them to reflect and
develop their intelligence.

This class of workers is the most familiar in Paris ;
and this class, above all, I have in mind in the following
pages. Its psychology is the more interesting because
the characteristics of this particular class are very clearly
defined, which is very far from being the case with many
of the other social categories.

The Parisian artisan constitutes a caste, from which
he rarely essays to issue. The son of a working man,
he likes his sons to remain working men, while the
dream of the peasant, on the contrary, and of the small
clerk or shop-hand, is to make "gentlemen" of his
sons.

THE DISCIPLES OF SOCIALISM 41

The clerk or shop-hand ' despises the artisan, but the
artisan despises the clerk far more, and thinks him an
idle and incapable person. He knows he is less well
dressed, less refined in his manners, but he thinks him-
self by far the superior in energy, activity, and intelli-
gence ; and more often than not he is. The artisan
advances only by merit, the employe by seniority. The
employe is only of significance through the whole of
which he is a part. The artisan represents a unit having
a value by itself. If the artisan knows his trade
thoroughly he is always sure of finding work wherever
he goes; the employe is not, and is always trembling
before the principals who may make him lose his em-
ployment. The artisan has far more dignity and in-
dependence. The employe is incapable of moving
outside of the narrow limits of regulations the observance
of which constitutes his entire function. The artisan,
on the contrary, encounters fresh difficulties every day,
which stimulate his enterprise and intelligence. Finally,
an artisan, being generally paid better than a clerk,
and not being subjected to the same necessities of
external decorum, is able to live a much fuller life. At
twenty-five a fairly capable artisan is earning without
difficulty a sum that a commercial or civil service clerk
will scarcely receive till after twenty years of service.

The psychological characteristics I am about to treat
of in detail are sufficiently general to allow of their
being attributed to the majority of Parisian artisans
of the same race. This ceases to be with regard
to artisans of difference race, so true is it that the
influences of race are greater than those of environment.
I shall show in another part of this book in what manner
English and Irish workers differ, though working in
the same shop — that is to say, subjected to identical

' Employe.

42 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

conditions of trade. Again, we in Paris have only
to compare the Parisian workman with Italians or Ger-
mans working under the same conditions— that is to
say, subjected to the same surrounding influences. We
will not undertake to study the subject, but will confine
ourselves to noticing that these racial influences are
clearly to be seen in Parisian workmen who have come
from certain provinces — for example, from Limousins.
Several of the psychological characteristics enumerated
further on by no means apply to the latter. The work-
man from Limousins is quiet, sober, and patient, and
neither noise nor luxury are necessary to him. He
frequents neither the wine-shop nor the theatre ; he
keeps to the costume of his native province in the city,
and his only dream is to save money and return to
his village. He confines himself to a few difficult,
but well-remunerated callings ; that of mason, for
instance, in which his punctuality and sobriety make him
much sought after.

These general principles and divisions being defined,
we will now consider the psychology of the Parisian
workmen, having more especially in view the class of
artisans. Here are the more striking elements of their
mental state :

The Parisian workman approaches the savage in his
impulsive nature, his lack of foresight, his want of self-
control, and his habit of having no guide but the instinct
of the moment ; but he possesses an artistic and some-
times critical sense extremely refined for his environ-
ment. Apart from the matters of his trade, which he
performs excellently, though with more taste than finish,
he reasons little or ill, and is hardly accessible to any
argument but that of his sentiments.

He likes to commiserate himself, and is given to railing,
but his complaints are more passive than active. He

THE DISCIPLES OF SOCIALISM 43

is at heart a true conversative and stay-at-home, and
has little stomach for change. Indifferent in the extreme
to political doctrines, he has always submitted readily to
all regimes, provided always that they had at their head
individuals possessed of prestige. A general's panache
always produces in him a species of respectful emotion
that he can scarcely resist. With words and prestige one
can easily manipulate him ; with reasons not at all.

He is very sociable, and fond of the company of
his comrades; hence his custom of haunting the wine-
shop, the true club and salon of the people. It is
not the taste for alcohol that takes him there, as is
often supposed. Drink is a pretext that may become
a habit ; but it is not the craving for alcohol that takes
him to the cabaret.

If he escapes his home by means of the public-house,
as the bourgeois escapes his by means of his club, it
is because his home has nothing very attractive about it.
His wife, his housekeeper, as he calls her, has undeniable
qualities of economy and foresight, but she takes no
interest in anything beyond her children, the prices
of things, and bargaining. Totally refractory to general
conceptions and to discussions, she enters into the latter
only when the purse and the cupboard are empty. She,
at least, is not one to choose the gallows merely to
uphold a principle.

The practice of frequenting the wine-shops, theatres,
and public meeting-places is for the Parisian workman
the consequence of his craving for excitement, expansion,
and emotion ; for uproarious discussion and the intoxi-
cation of words. Doubtless he would do better to please
the moralists by soberly keeping to his room. But in
order to do that he must have, in the place of the mental
constitution of a workman, the brain of a moralist.

Political ideas do sometimes lead the workman, but

44 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

they hardly ever absorb him. He will readily become
a rebel, a fanatic, for an instant, but he never remains
a sectarian. He is so impulsive that no idea whatever
can permanently impress itself on him. His hatred of
the bourgeois is as often as not a convention, a wholly
superficial sentiment.

One must know very little indeed of the workman
to suppose him capable of pursuing seriously the reali-
sation of any ideal whatever, Socialistic or otherwise.
The ideal of the workman, when by chance he has
one, is everything that is not revolutionary, not Socialistic,
and everything that is middle-class. His ideal is always
the little house in the country ; a little house that must
not be too far from the wine-seller's shop.

He possesses a great stock of generosity and con-
fidence. He will most readily and cordially lodge a
comrade in distress, often at great inconvenience to
himself, and will every instant render him a host of little
services which men of the world would never perform
under the same circumstances. He has no egotism,
and in this respect shows himself greatly the superior
of the bourgeois, whose egotism is on the contrary very
highly developed. From this point of view he deserves
a sympathy of which the bourgeoisie are not always
worthy. Besides, it is evident that this development
of egotism in the superior classes is the necessary
consequence of their wealth and culture, and propor-
tional to the degree of their wealth and culture. Only
the poor man is really humane, because only he really
knows what misery is.

This absence of egotism, together with the readiness
with which he becomes filled with enthusiasm for the
individuals that charm him, render the Parisian workman
liable to devote himself, if not to the triumph of an idea,
at least to the leaders who have seduced his mind. The

THE DISCIPLES OF SOCIALISM 45

recent Boulangist adventure affords us an instructive
example.

The Parisian workman willingly derides all matters of
religion. At heart he has an unconscious respect for
them ; his derision is directed never against religion as
such, but against the clergy, whom he considers rather as
a sort of branch of the Government. Marriages and
burials without the rites of the Church are rare among
the working classes of Paris. Married only at the mairie
the workman would always feel himself badly married.
His religious instincts — that is, his tendency to allow
himself to be dominated by any creed whatever, political,
social, or religious — are very tenacious. Instincts like
these will one day constitute one of the elements of suc-
cess of Socialism, which is in reality only a new creed. If
Socialism does succeed in propagating itself among the
workers, it will be not at all as the theorists hold, by the
satisfactions it promises them, but by the disinterested
devotion which its apostles will be able to awaken.

The political conceptions of the working man are very
rudimentary and of an extreme simplicity. The Govern-
ment represents for him a mysterious absolute power,
able to decree at will the increase or decrease of salaries,
but, as a general thing, hostile to the workers and favour-
able to the employers. Anything disagreeable happening
to the working man is necessarily the fault of the
Government ; this is why he so easily accepts the pro-
position to change it. For the rest, he cares little for the
nature of the Government which directs him, and is only
certain that there must be one. The good Government
is that which protects the workers, raises wages, and
molests the employer. Having little occasion to make
use of his political liberties he cares little for them. If
he has a sympathy for Socialism, it is that he beholds in
it a system of government which will increase wages

46 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

while reducing the hours of work. If he could realise
to what a system of regimentation and surveillance the
Socialists propose to subject themselves in their ideal
society, he would at once become the implacable enemy
of the new doctrines.

The theorists of Socialism think they know the mind
of the working classes well ; they really know very little
about the matter. They imagine the elements of per-
suasion are found in discussion and argument ; in reality
they have very different sources. What remains of all
their speeches in the vulgar mind ? Very little indeed.
When we freely question a workman who calls himself a
Socialist, if we ignore the shreds of ready-made humani-
tarian phrases and the stale imprecations against capital
which he repeats mechanically, we find that his Social-
istic concept is a vague reverie, very like that of the
early Christians. In a very distant future, too distant
greatly to impress him, he perceives the advent of the
kingdom of the poor, the poor in fortune and the poor
in spirit ; the kingdom from which the rich will be
jealously expelled, the rich in money and the rich in
mind.

As for the means of realising this remote ideal, the
workman scarcely dreams of them. The theorists, who
know very little of his real nature, have no suspicion that
it is precisely in the plebeian that Socialism will one
day meet its most formidable enemy ; on the day when
it shall seek to pass from theory to practice. The work-
ing classes, and still more the peasants, have the instinct
of property at least as highly developed as the middle
classes. They are anxious enough to increase their
possessions, but they will elect to dispose of the fruits of
their labour in their own fashion, rather than abandon
them to a collectivity, although this collectivity may
pretend to satisfy all their desires. Such a sentiment has

THE DISCIPLES OF SOCIALISM 47

secular origins, and it will always uprear itself as an
inviolable wall against every attempt of Collectivism.

Although he is headstrong, turbulent, and always ready
to side with the promoters of revolution, the working
man is strongly attached to the old order of things ; he is
extremely arbitrary, a thorough conservative, and a firm
believer in authority. He has always acclaimed those
who have shattered altars and thrones, but he has ac-
claimed with far greater fervour those who have re-estab-
lished them. When by chance he becomes employer
in his turn he behaves like an absolute monarch, and is
far harder on his former comrades than the employer of
the middle class. General du Barrail describes in the
following words the psychology of the workman who has
emigrated to Algeria to become a colonist — a profession
which consists simply in making the natives work by
hitting them with a stick : " A democrat in soul, he
entertained all the instincts of the feudal age ; escaped
from the workshops of the manufacturing towns, he
spoke and reasoned like the vassals of Pepin the Short or
Charlemagne, or like the knights of William the Con-
queror, who carved out vast domains from the territories
of vanquished peoples."

Always a jester, often sprightly, he is an expert in
seizing' the comic side of things, and appreciates, above
all, the humorous or rowdy side of political events.
The arraignment of a minister by a deputy or a jour-
nalist amuses him immensely, but the opinions defended
by the minister and his opponents interest him but little.
A discussion carried on by exchange of invective excites
him as much as a scene at the Ambigu, " while debate by
exchange of arguments leaves him totally indifferent.

This characteristic turn of mind is naturally exem-
plified in his manner of conducting debates, as far as one
' A theatre corresponding to our Adelphi. — Trans,

48 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

is able to observe it at political meetings of the people.
He never discusses the worth of an opinion ; only that
of the person expressing it. He is seduced by the
personal prestige of an orator, not by his reasoning. He
does not attack the opinions of a speaker who displeases
him, but only his person. The probity of his adversary is
immediately called into question, and that adversary may
consider himself lucky if he is treated simply as a poor
fool, and has nothing harder than words about his head.
As we know, the debates at public meetings consist in-
variably of an exchange of savage invective and pro-
miscuous blows. This, however, is a racial vice which
is by no means peculiar to the working man. To
numbers of people it is impossible to hear any person
give expression to an opinion widely differing from their
own without becoming intimately persuaded that this
individual is a complete imbecile or an infamous
scoundi-el. The comprehension of the ideas of others
has always been inaccessible to the Latins.

The careless, impulsive, changeful, and turbulent
character of the Parisian working classes has always
prevented them from associating themselves to undertake
important enterprises, as do the English workers. This
incorrigible incapacity makes it impossible for them to
dispense with direction, and condemns them by this
alone to remain in perpetual tutelage. They feel an
incurable need of having some one over them to govern
them, to whom they can resort with regard to every-
thing that may befall them. Here again we find a racial '
characteristic.

The only well-defined result of the Socialist propa-
ganda among the working classes has been to sow the
opinion that they are exploited by their employers, and
that by changing the Government they would receive
higher wages and far less work. But their conservative

THE DISCIPLES OF SOCIALISM 49

instincts withhold the majority of them from rallying to
this idea. At the elections of 1893, out of ten million
electors only 556,000 gave their votes to Socialist
deputies, and the latter numbered only 49. This low
percentage, which showed hardly any increase at the
elections of 1898, proves how tenacious are the con-
servative interests of the working classes.

There is another fundamental reason which singularly
hinders the propagation of Socialistic ideas. The num-
ber of workmen who are small proprietors and small
stockholders is increasing on all hands. The little house,
the smallest one can imagine, the small share, though it
be only a fraction of a share, suddenly transforms its
possessor into a calculating capitalist, and develops his
instincts of property to an astonishing extent. As soon
as he has a family, a house, and a few savings, the work-
man becomes immediately a stubborn Conservative.
The Socialist, above all the Anarchist-Socialist, is usually
a bachelor, without home, means, or family ; that is to
say, a nomad, and in all ages the nomad has been a
refractory and a barbarian. When the evolution of
economics has made the workman the proprietor of a
part, as small as one chooses to suppose, of the factory
he works in, his conceptions of the relations between
labour and capital will undergo a complete change. The
proof is furnished by the few workshops in which such
transformations have already been realised, and also by
the mental state of the peasant. The latter, as a general
thing, leads a far harder life than the urban workman,
but he usually has a field to cultivate, and for that simple
reason is scarcely ever a Socialist, unless the idea ger-
minates in his primitive brain that it might be possible
to take possession of his neighbour's field, without, of
course, abandoning his own.

We may sum up the preceding remarks by observing

5

50 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

that the class most refractory to Socialism will be pre
cisely the working class on which the Socialists count
so much. The propaganda of the Socialists have given
rise to covetousness and hatred, but the new doctrines
have not seriously affected the mind of the people. It is
quite possible that the Socialists may recruit from the
people the soldiers of a revolution, after one of those
events — such as a long turn of idleness or a fall in wages
as the result of some economic competition — which the
working classes always attribute to the Government ; but
it will be precisely these soldiers who will rally with all
celerity round the plume of the Cassar who shall arise to
suppress this revolution.

3. The Directing Classes.

"A fact that largely aids the progress of Socialism,"
writes M. de Laveleye, " is its gradual invasion of the
upper and educated classes."

The factors of this invasion, to my mind, are of several
orders : the contagion of fashionable beliefs, fear, and
indifference.

" A large proportion of the middle classes," writes
Signor Garofalo, "while regarding the Socialist move-
ment with a certain trepidation, are convinced to-day
that it is irresistible and inevitable. Among this number
are those candid souls who are ingenuously enamoured
of the Socialist ideal, and see in it the aspiration towards
the reign of justice and universal felicity,"

There we have simply the expression of a superficial
and unreasoning sentiment, accepted through contagion.
To adopt a political or social opinion only when, after
mature reflection, it appears to respond to the reality of
things, is a process apparently impossible to the average
Latin mind. If in the adoption of an opinion — political,
social, or religious — we were to employ a, fractional part

THE DISCIPLES OF SOCIALISM 51

of the lucidity and reflection which the pettiest of grocers
employs in a matter of business, we should not be, as we
are in political or religious questions, at the mercy of our
circumstances, of sentiments, of an hour's fashion ; we
should not be floating, as we are, at the mercy of the
events and opinions of the moment.

Socialistic tendencies to-day are far more prevalent
among the middle classes than among the populace.
They spread by simple contagion, and with remarkable
rapidity. Philosophers, litterateurs, and artists follow the
movement with docility, and contribute actively to spread
it. The theatre, books, pictures even, are becoming more
and more steeped in this tearful and sentimental Socialism,
which is entirely reminiscent of the humanitarianism of
the controlling classes at the time of the Revolution. The
guillotine promptly tavight them that in the struggle for
life one cannot renounce self-defence without at the same
stroke renouncing life. Considering with what com-
plaisance the upper classes are to-day allowing themselves
to be progressively disarmed, the historia'n of the future
will feel only contempt for their lameritable want of fore-
sight, and will not lament their fate.

Fear is another of the factors which favour the propaga-
tion of Socialism among the bourgeoisie. "The bour-
geoisie," writes the author I quoted but now, " are
afraid. They grope about irresolutely, and hope to save
themselves by concessions, forgetting that this is the most
insensate policy imaginable, and that indecision, par-
leyings, and the desire to content everybody, are faults of
character which, by an eternal injustice, the world has
always cruelly punished, more cruelly than if they had
been crimes."

The last' of the factors which I cited, the factor of
indifference, if it does not directly favour the propaga-
tion of Socialism, at least facilitates it by restraining

52 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

people from fighting it. Sceptical indifference, " je
m' enfichisme," as the current saying goes, is the great
malady of the modern bourgeoisie. When, to the decla-
mations and assaults of an increasing minority, which is
pursuing with fervour the realisation of an ideal, nothing
is opposed but indifference, one may be sure that the
triumph of that minority is very near at hand. Are the
worst enemies of society those that attack it, or those
who do not even give themselves the trouble of defending
it?

4. Demi-Savants and Doctrinaires.

I apply the term demi-savant to those who have no
other knowledge than that contained in books, and who
consequently know absolutely nothing of the realities of
life. They are the product of our schools and universities,
those lamentable factories of degeneration whose disas-
trous effects have been exposed by Taine, Paul Bourget,
and many others. A professor, a scholar, or a graduate of
one of our great colleges is always for years, and often all
his life, nothing but a demi-savant.

It is from the ranks of the demi-savant, and notably
from the ranks of unemployed licentiates and bachelors
of the universities, outcasts from society whom the State
has been unable to place, ushers discontented with their
lot, university professors who find their merits overlooked,
that the most dangerous disciples of Socialism are recruited,
and even the worst Anarchists. The last Anarchist executed
in Paris was an unsuccessful candidate from the Ecole
Polytechnique ; a man unable to find any employment
for his useless and superficial science, and consequently
the enemy of a society which was not wise enough to
appreciate his merits, and naturally anxious to replace it
it by a new world in which the vast capacities he supposed
himself to possess would have found an outlet. The dis-

THE DISCIPLES OF SOCIALISM 53

contented demi-savant is the worst of malcontents. It is
this discontent that explains the frequency of Socialism
among certain bodies of individuals — schoolmasters, for
example, who always consider themselves ill-used and
unappreciated.

The learned Italian criminologist, Signor Garofalo,
recounts a remark made by one of his compatriots : " All
the masters in Piedmont, where I spent some time last
year, are ardent Socialists. You should hear them talk
to their pupils ! "

It is the same in France, and it is perhaps from among
our university instructors and professors that Socialism
draws most recruits. The chief leader of the French
Socialists is an ex-professor of the university. A judi-
cious critic, M. Maurice Talmeyr, has recently drawn
attention, in a leading journal, to the stupefying fact, that
this Socialist having applied for authorisation to deliver a
course on collectivism at the Sorbonne, 16 professors out
of 37 supported his request.

To show what the opinions of the candidate for this
chair of Socialism are like, M. Talmeyr gives the following
extract from one of his lectures : —

" When we have destroyed everything, we shall construct
from top to bottom the social republic on the blood-
stained and smoking ruins of what was once reactionary
France ! . . ."

Then he adds :

" What is the general spirit of the University to-day ?
The majority of the professors are sane, but they are
side by side with a minority who are afflicted with gan-
grene, and a singularly virulent gangrene. Is it not
an unheard-of thing, and one full of incalculable pro-
mises, this manifestation of the sixteen of the Sorbonne
at the present hour ? Are there really to be found
there, instituted, maintained, and consecrated by the

54 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

State, sixteen professors of history, rhetoric, poetry, and
what not, who are perfectly ready to suppress individual
property, to abolish the army, and to continue on its
ruins, from the sentry-boxes of the Prussian soldiers,
the lessons they have delivered to us up to the present
from their chairs ? Our university instrtictors make over-
much noise for their number, but their number, however,
does not appear negligible, and all these muddy con-
sciences of pedants, ' who call themselves ' troubled
consciences,' show us of what rancid pride and blustering
hypocrisy they are made. The actual condition of certain
university functionaries denotes more than the fondness
of 'being in advance.' A cynical scepticism, an ardent
habit of ranting, and a vague delirium of destruction are
strangely combined in the impotent ' spirit of the day,'
and plenty of our professors, to-day, are only too much of
their time. They push too far the puerility of believing in
nothing, and run too instinctively to anything that seems
to represent a science, or to corrosive manifestations of
any kind. They are too fond of dangerous courses and
evil doctrines because they are dangerous courses and
evil doctrines, and they give vent on too many occasions
to too much fermented pretension and malevolence.
Consider carefully the university professor and his un-
solicited intervention in recent affairs, and you will see it
exclusively under two aspects ; he was there to destroy
and to exhibit himself. He puts himself forward without
motive, in an attitude without frankness, sobbing without
tears, and degrades, corrupts, and demolishes without
reason. He has the appearance of a pedant ; he is an
Anarchist."

' "Et toutes ces consciences troubles de pidants, qui se diseni des
' consciences troubUes.' " There is here an untranslatable play of
words ; trouble means dull, muddy, dim, cloudy ; troubUe means
afflicted. — Trans.

THE DISCIPLES OF SOCIALISM 55

The part played to-day by university functionaries in the
Latin countries is altogether threatening to the societies
in which they live. " All these theorists of the absolute,"
as a penetrating thinker, M. Maurice Barr6s, justly remarks,
"always impede public affairs." They may be distin-
guished in their specialities,^ but they are total strangers to
the realities of the world, and by that reason are even in-
capable of understanding the artificial but necessary con-
ditions which render the existence of a society possible.
A society directed by an areopagus of scientists, such
as Auguste Comte dreamed of, would not last six
months. In questions of general interest the opinions
of specialists in letters or science are of no greater value
than that of ignorant people, and very often are of much
less value, if these ignorant people be peasants or workmen
whose profession has brought them into contact with the
realities of life. I have elsewhere insisted on this point,
which constitutes the most solid argument in favour of
universal suffrage. It is among the crowd that we often
find the political spirit, patriotism, and the sentiment of
the value of social interests, but rarely found among the
specialists.

By the crowd, in fact, is most often manifested the soul
of a race and the comprehension of its interests. They
are doubtless guided by instinct, not by reason ; but are
not the acts determined by instinct, often enough, superior
to those of reason ?

Instinct, which directs all the acts of our inorganic life,

' They belong to that order of scientists of which M. Rene Sand
has recently given an excellent analysis in the Revue ScienUfique :
" Confined in their speciality, incapable of intellectual co-ordination,
they know nothing of general ideas, and leave their method and
principles behind when they sally from their narrow domain ; they
are anti-scientific in their relations with men and things in their
social^ literary, and artistic ideas, in all the relations of life. . . .
They are not thinkers, they are monks."

56 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

and the immense majority of the acts of intellectual life,
is to the conscious life of the mind what the profound
waters of the ocean are to the waves that ruffle their sur-
face. If the incessant action of instinct were to cease,
man could not live a day. Renan, who was far more a
poet than a philosopher, has, nevertheless, well defined
the part played by this powerful factor in the following
passage, which becomes extremely just if we substitute for
the words " spontaneous," " hidden God," and " universal
l^iorce," the simple word " instinct." The latter term repre-
I sents simply the inheritance of all the adaptations acquired
by our long series of ancestors, dating back to the monad of
the first geological ages : —

"The mechanism of intelligence is difficult to analyse;
yet, without knowing its analysis, the simplest man knows
how to touch its every spring. Applied to the spontaneous,
the words easy and difficult have no meaning. The child
learning his language, or humanity building up a science,
meets with no more difficulties than a plant in growing, than
an organic body in reaching its complete development.
Everywhere is the hidden God, the universal force ; which,
acting in sleep, in the absence of the individual soul,
produces these marvellous effects, as far above human
artifice, as the Infinite Power surpasses finite powers."

It is because the half-science of the demi-savant obscures
the instinctive intuitions, that its intervention in social
affairs is so often harmful.

Social failures, misunderstood geniuses, lawyers with-
out clients, writers without readers, doctors without
patients, professors ill-paid, graduates without employ-
ment, clerks whose employers disdain them for their
insufficiency, puffed-up university instructors — these are
the natural adepts of Socialism. In reality they care very
little for doctrines. Their dream is to create by violent
means a society in which they will be the masters. Their

THE DISCIPLES OF SOCIALISM 57

cry of equality does not prevent them from having an
intense scorn of the rabble who have not, as they have,
learned out of books. They believe themselves greatly the
superiors of the vi^orking man, and are really greatly his
inferiors in their lack of practical sense and their exagge-
rated egotism. If they became masters their despotism
would be no less than that of Marat, Saint-Just, or
Robespierre, those excellent types of the unappreciated
demi-savant. The hope of tyrannising in one's turn, when
one has always been ignored, humiliated, thrust into the
shade, must have created many disciples of Socialism.
Their mental state may be compared to that of those
Kaffirs whose rudimentary psychology was recently
depicted in one of the journals in the following terms :
" Attracted by the promise of gain, they enlist themselves
en masse in the mines, where they work at very low wages,
with the sole ambition of saving some fifty or sixty pounds,
with which they return to their village, not without having
first acquired a fashionable silk hat, a red umbrella, and a
pair of boots. In this remarkable attire they install them-
selves at the doors of their huts, while making women and
children work for them under pain of the lash."

To this category of demi-savants belong most often
the doctrinaires who formulate, in poisonous publications,
the theories their ingenuous disciples at once begin to
propagate. These are the generals who appear to direct
the soldiers, but who really confine themselves to following
them. They form a small majority whose influence is far
more apparent than real. In reality they do little else
than transform aspirations which they have not created
into noisy invective, and give them that dogmatic form
which permits the leaders to appear in print. Their
books are often a sort of evangels, which no one ever
reads, but from which one may cite in argument the title,
or a few fragmentary phrases reproduced by special

58 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

papers. There is not a Socialist who does not constantly
invoke the work of Karl Marx on Capital, but I very much
doubt if one in ten thousand has even turned over the
leaves of this indigestible volume. The obscurity of
such works is, however, a fundamental condition of their
success. Like the Bible for the Protestant clergy, they
constitute a sort of prophetic conjuring book, which one
has only to open at random to find — provided that one
possesses faith — the solution of any question in the
world.

The doctrinaire, then, may be highly educated ; that
in no way saves him from being always obtuse and
ingenuous, and most often an envious malcontent as
well. Struck only by one side of a question, he remains
in ignorance of the march of events and their recurrence.
He is incapable of understanding anything of the com-
plexity of social phenomena, of economic necessities, of
atavistic influences, of the passions which really rule men.
Having no guide but a bookish and rudimentary logic he
readily believes that his ideas are about to transform the
evolution of humanity and overcome destiny.

The lucubrations of all these noisy doctrinaires are
sufficiently vague, and their ideal of the future society
sufficiently chimerical ; but one thing is not at all
chimerical, and that is their furious hatred of the actual
state of society, and their burning desire to destroy it.

If the revolutionaries of all ages have always shown
themselves powerless to construct anything whatever,
they have never found much difficulty in destroying.
The hand of a child may set fire to all the treasures of
art that centuries have hoarded together in a museum.
Their influence may go so far as to provoke a successful
and ruinous revolution, but it will not be able to go
further. The incorrigible need of being governed which
has always been manifested by a crowd would quickly

THE DISCIPLES OF SOCIALISM 59

bring these innovators under the sabre of a despot, no
matter who, and whom they would be the first to
acclaim, as our history proves. Revolutions cannot
modify the minds of peoples ; revolutions have never
effected more than ironical changes of words and super-
ficial transformations. Nevertheless, it is for the sake of
insignificant changes that the world has been so often
overturned, and will doubtless continue to be.

If one were to review the parts played by the various
classes in the dissolution of society among the Latin
peoples, one would say that the doctrinaires and mal-
contents manufactured by the universities act above all
by attacking ideals, and are, by reason of the intellectual
anarchy they give rise to, one of the most corrosive factors
of destruction ; the middle classes help the downfall by
their indifference, their egotism, their feeble will, and
their absence of initiative or political perception ; the
lower classes act in a revolutionary manner by seeking to
destroy, so soon as it shall be sufficiently undermined,
the edifice which is tottering on its foundations.

BOOK II

SOCIALISM AS A BELIEF

CHAPTER I

THE FOUNDATIONS OF OUR BELIEFS

I. The ancestral origins of our beliefs : — To understand Socialism it is
necessary to examine how our beliefs are formed — Ancestral, or
sentimental concepts — Acquired, or intellectual concepts — The influ-
ence of these two categories of concepts — Beliefs that appear now are
always the offspring of older beliefs — Slowness with which beliefs
change — Utility of common beliefs — Their establishment marks the
culminating period of a civilisation — The great civilisations represent
the efflorescence of a small number of beliefs — No civilisation has
been able to maintain itself without basing itself on common beliefs.
2. The part flayed by beliefs with regard to our ideas and sentiments.
Psychology of incomprehension : — How our knowledge of the world is
obscured by our hereditary beliefs — They affect not only our con-
duct, but the senses we attach to words — Individuals of different race
and different class in reality speak different languages — Incorn-
prehension separates them quite as much as the divergence of their
interests — Why persuasion has never depended on reason — The over-
whelming influence of the dead in discussions between the living —
The consequence of incomprehension — Impossibility of colonisation
for peoples among whom incomprehension is too pronounced — Why
histories are so far removed from the reality. 3. The ancestral
formation of the moral idea : — The real motives of conduct are
most often hereditary instincts — The Moral Idea only exists when
it has become instinctive and hereditary — ^The slight value of precept
in morals.

I, The Ancestral Origins of our Beliefs.

ALL the civilisations that have succeeded one another
in the course of ages have reposed on a certain
number of beliefs, which beliefs have always played a
fundamental part in the lives of the nations.

THE FOUNDATIONS OF OUR BELIEFS 61

How are these beliefs born, and ho_w do they develop ?
We have already treated this matter, in a summary fashion,
in the Psychology of Peoples. It may be useful to return
to the question. Socialism is a faith far more than a
doctrine. Only by making ourselves perfectly familiar
with the mechanism of the genesis of beliefs can we
perceive what a part Socialism may perhaps be called
upon to play.

Man cannot change, of his own will, the sentiments
and beliefs which dominate him. Behind the vain
struggles of the individual lurk always the influences
of atavism. These are they that give to the crowd that
narrow conservatism which their momentary revolts
obscure. The thing that men are least able to support is
a thing they never do support for long — change in their
hereditary thoughts and habits.

These very ancestral influences are the influences which
still protect civilisations that are already too old, of which
we are the possessors, which we keep alive, and which
many elements of destruction are threatening at the
present day.

This slowness of the evolution of beliefs constitutes
one of the most essential facts of history, and at the same
time one of the facts the least explained by historians.
Psychology alone permits us to determine its causes.

In addition to the exterior and variable conditions to
which he is perforce subject, man is especially guided in
life by conceptions of two kinds — ancestral or sentimental
concepts and acquired or intellectual concepts.

Ancestral concepts are the heritage of the race, the legacy
of ancestors immediate or far removed, an unconscious
legacy bestowed at birth, and which determines the
principal motives of conduct.

Acquired or intellectual concepts are those which man
acquires under the influence of his environment and

62 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

education. They aid him to reason, to explain, to dis
course, but are very rarely the cause of his conduct.
Their influence over his actions remains practically nil,
until, by repeated hereditary accumulations, they have
penetrated his sub-consciousness and have become senti-
ments. If the acquired concepts do sometimes succeed
in contending with the ancestral concepts it is that the
latter have been neutralised or annulled by contrary
heritages, as happens, for example, in crosses between
members of different races. The individual then becomes
a sort of tabula rasa. He has lost his ancestral concepts;
he is nothing but a hybrid without morals or character,
at the mercy of every impulse.

One reason of the so heavy weight of secular heredity
is that amongst the so numerous beliefs and opinions
which are born every day we find so few, in the course
of the ages, that become preponderant and universal.
One might even say that, in a humanity already aged,
no new general belief could form itself if this belief did
not attach itself intimately to anterior beliefs. The nations
have scarcely known such a thing as a totally new belief.
Religions which seem original — such as Buddhism,
Christianity, Islamism — when we consider only an
advanced stage of their evolution, are in reality
the simple efflorescence of former beliefs. They have
only been able to develop when the beliefs replaced by
them had lost their empire through the passage of time.
They vary according to the various races which practise
them, and are in nothing universal but in the letter of
their dogmas. We have already seen, in another work,
that in passing from nation to nation they become funda-
mentally transformed in order to graft themselves on the
previous religions of those nations. A new faith becomes
thus nothing but the rejuvenescence of a preceding faith.
There are not only Jewish elements in Christianity ; it has

THE FOUNDATIONS OF OUR BELIEFS 63

its sources in the most ancient religions of the peoples of
Europe and Asia. The thread of water that trickled from
the Sea of Galilee became an impetuous river only because
all Pagan antiquity thither turned its waters. " The con-
tributions of the Jews to Christian mythology," says M.
Louis Mdnard very truly, " are scarcely equal to those of
the Egyptians and the Persians."

Simple and slight though these changes of faith may
be, yet ages and ages are required to fix them in the soul
of a people. A faith is quite other than an opinion
which one debates ; it exists as a factor of conduct, and
consequently is really possessed of power only when it
has been handed down in the sub-consciousness, and
has there formed the solid concretion called a sentiment.
Then faith possesses the character which is essential if it
is td be imperative, and keeps aloof from the influences
of discussion and analysis.^ Only in its beginnings,
when it is still floating in the air, can a faith be rooted
at all in the intelligence ; but to assure its triumph it is
necessary, I repeat, that it should sink into the region

' We need not go back to heroic times for an example of faith
immune against all discussion. We need only look about us to
discover a host of people possessing, like sprouts of an hereditary
stock of mysticism, faith upon faith derived from this mystic stock,
and which no argument can shake. All the little religious sects
which have sprung up during the last twenty-five years, as they
sprung up at the close of Paganism — Spiritualism, Theosophy,
Esoterism, &c. — can boast of numerous disciples who present this
mental state in which faith can no longer be destroyed by any
argument whatever. The celebrated affair of the spirit-photographs
is full of instruction on this point. The photographer B. publicly
declared that all the photographs of phantoms supplied to his
ingenuous clients were obtained by photographing dummies. The
argument would seem conclusive. But in spite of the avowals
of the factitious photographer, despite the production in public of
the dummies which had served as models, the spiritualist clients
maintained with energy that they recognised perfectly in the photo-
graphs the features of their defunct relatives. This marvellous
obstinacy of faith is extremely instructive, and helps us thoroughly
to understand the power of a belief.

64 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

of the sentiments, and so pass from the conscious into
the unconscious or instinctive.

I must insist on this influence of the past in the
elaboration of faiths, and on the fact that a new faith can
only establish itself by attaching itself to an anterior
^th. This establishment of beliefs is perhaps the most
important phase of the evolution of civilisations. One
of the greatest benefits of an established belief is to give
a people common sentiments, to create common thoughts,
and by consequence common words ; that is to say, to
cause identity of ideas. The established faith finally creates
a common state of mind, and this is why it sets its mark
on all the elements of a civilisation. A common faith
constitutes perhaps the most powerful factor of the
creation of a national soul, a national mind, and con-
sequently the identical orientation of national senti-
ments and ideas. The great civilisations have always
been the logical efflorescence of a small number of
beliefs, and the decadence of a nation is always near
when the common beliefs are becoming dissociated.

A collective belief has the immense advantage of
uniting in a single bundle all the manifold individual
desires, of making a nation act as a single individual
would act. It is with reason that people have said that
the great periods of history have been precisely those
at which a universal belief has established itself.

The part played in the life of nations by universal
beliefs is so fundamental that its importance can hardly
' be exaggerated. History does not furnish an example
of a civilisation establishing and maintaining itself with-
out having at its base the common beliefs of all the
individuals of a nation, or at the very least of a city.
This community of beliefs gives the nation which pos-
sesses it a formidable strength, even when the belief
is transitory. We have seen how the French at the time

THE FOUNDATIONS OF OUR BELIEFS 65

of the Revolution, animated by a new faith, which could
not last because it could not perform its promises,
struggled victoriously against all Europe in arms.

2. The Part played by Beliefs with regard to
Our Ideas and Sentiments — the Psychology
OF Incomprehension.

As soon as a belief is securely established in the under-
standing it becomes the regulator of life, the touchstone
of judgment, the director of intelligence. The mind can
receive nothing new that does not conform to the new
faifh. Like Christianity in the Middle Ages and Islam
among the Arabs, the prevailing faith sets its imprint
on all the elements of civilisation, and notably on philo-
sophy, literature, and the arts. It is the supreme criterion ;
■ it explains everything. The rationale of all our know-
ledge, for the sage as well as for the fool, consists in
nothing else than in carrying the unknown to the known ;
that is to say, to what we think we know. Comprehen-
sion supposes the observation of a fact, and then its
co-ordination with the small number of ideas already
possessed by the individual. We thus relate unknown
facts to facts we believe ourselves to understand, and
each brain accomplishes this relation according to the
sub-conscious concepts which rule it. From the most
inferior mind to the highest the mechanism of explana-
tion is always the same, and consists invariably of
introducing a new idea in the midst of already acquired
conceptions.

And it is precisely because we co-relate our perceptions
of the world to particular ancestral conceptions that
the individuals of the different races have such different
judgments. We perceive things only by deforming
them, and we deform them according to our beliefs.

6

66 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

Beliefs that have become transformed into sentiments
act not only upon our conduct in life, they influence
also the sense we attach to words. The causes of the
dissensions and the struggles which divide humanity are
engendered for the most part by the same phenomena,
but according to diverse mental constitutions and strongly
differing ideas. Follow from century to century, from
race to race, and from one sex to the other, the ideas
evoked by the same words. Consider, for example, what
are represented, to minds of differing origin, by the
following words — religion, liberty, republic, bourgeoisie,
property, capital, labour — and you will see how profound
are the abysses which separate these mental representa-
tions.^ The different classes of the same society,
individuals of different sex, seem to speak, the same
language, but it is only in appearance. The nuances of
signification of this language are as numerous as the social
and mental categories that employ it. Sometimes these
nuances escape them reciprocally to the extent of leading
them to absolute incomprehension.

The different classes of society, and still moi-e the
different nations, are as widely separated by divergence
of conception as by divergence of interests ; this is why
the conflict of classes and races, and not their chimerical
concord, has always constituted a dominant fact of

' The refraction of ideas, that is to say, the deformation of
concepts according to race, age, sex, education, is one of the least
explored questions of psychology. I have touched on it in one
of my latter works, in showing how institutions, religions, languages,
and arts become transformed in passing from one people to another.
I have recently sketched the programme of this study for a young
and intelligent psychologist, M. E. Renoult, living on account of his
profession among the lower classes, who furnished me with some
interesting documents for the above work, and notably on the
psychology of the working man. If he succeeds in bringing this
task to a successful end he will have rendered a great service to
psychology and sociology.

THE FOUNDATIONS OF OUR BELIEFS 67

history. This discordance can only increase in the
future. Far from tending to equalise men, civilisation
tends to differentiate them more and more. Between
a powerful feudal baron and the least of his retainers
there was infinitely less mental difference than there is
to-day between an engineer and the labourer he directs.

Between different races, different classes, different
sexes, agreement is only possible on technical subjects
into which the instinctive sentiments do not enter. In /
morals, in religion, in politics, on the contrary, agree- j
ment is impossible, or is only possible when the
individuals in question have the same origin ; and \
then they agree, not by reasoning, but by the identity ;
of their conceptions. Persuasion is never rooted in
reason. When people are gathered together to con-
sider a question of politics, religions, or morals, they
are the dead, not the living, who discuss. They are!
the souls of their ancestors that speak from their
mouths, and their words are the echoes of the eternal
voices of the dead, to which the living are always
obedient.

Words, then, have senses very different according to
our beliefs, and for this reason they evoke in our minds
very different sentiments and ideas. Perhaps the most
arduous effort of thought is to succeed in penetrating
to the minds of individuals who constitute types differing
from our own. We succeed in so doing with difficulty
enough in the case of compatriots who differ from us
only in age, sex, or in education ; how shall we succeed
in the case of men of different race, above all when cen-
turies separate us ? To make another person understand
one must speak in his own tongue, with the nuances of
his own personal conceptions. One may live for years
beside another being without ever understanding him,
as parents do by their children. All our usual psycho-

68 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

logy is based on the hypothesis that all men experience
identical sentiments under similar exciting influences,
and nothing is more erroneous.

We can never hope to see things as they really are,
since we are aware only of states of consciousness created
by our senses. We can no more hope that the deforma-
tion undergone may be identical for all men, for this
deformation varies according to their various inherited
or acquired conceptions ; that is to say, according to
race, sex, environment, and so forth ; and for this reason
one may say that an almost total incomprehension most
often qualifies the relations between individuals of dif-
ferent race, sex, or environment. They may employ the
same words ; they never speak the same language.

Our vision of things, therefore, is always a deformed
vision, but we have no suspicion of this deformation.
We are even generally persuaded that it cannot exist ;
it is almost impossible for us to admit that other men
can think and act otherwise than exactly as we ourselves
think and act. This incomprehension has for its final
result an absolute intolerance, above all in respect of
beliefs and opinions which repose entirely on the
sentiments.

All those who profess different opinions to our own
in religion, morals, art, or politics immediately become,
in our eyes, persons of dubious character, or, at least,
lamentable imbeciles. We also consider it our strict
duty, as soon as we possess the power, rigorously to
persecute such dangerous monsters. If we no longer
burn them and guillotine them, it is because the
decadence of manners and the ^ regrettable mildness
of the laws oppose such proceedings.

As for individuals of very different race : we freely
admit, at least in theory, that they cannot think exactly
as we do, but not without commiserating their lamen-

THE FOUNDATIONS OF OUR BELIEFS 69

table blindness. We also consider it a benefit to them
to convert them to our manners and customs and laws
by the most energetic means, when by chance we become
their masters. Arabs, negroes, Annamese, Malagasy, and
so forth, on whom we aspire to impress our manners,
laws, and customs — whom, as the politicians say, we desire
to assimilate, have learned by experience what it costs to
think otherwise than their conquerors. They continue
certainly to retain their ancestral conceptions, but they
have learned to hide their thoughts, and have acquired
at the same time an implacable hatred for their new
masters.

Incomprehension presents itself in different degrees
among the different peoples. Among those who travel
little or not at all — for example, the Latins — it is abso-
lute, and their intolerance is accordingly complete. Our
incapacity to understand the ideas of other peoples,
civilised or not, is amazing. It is also the principal
cause of the lamentable state of our colonies. The
most eminent Latins, and even men of genius such as
Napoleon, do not differ from the common run of men
in this particular. Napoleon never had the vaguest
notion of the psychology of a Spaniard or an English-
man. His judgments upon them were about as valuable
as that one read, recently, in one of our great political
journals, as to the conduct of England with regard to
the African savages. " She intervenes always," said the
worthy editor, with indignation, " to prevent the tribes
from getting rid of their kings, and setting up repubhcs."
Nothing could be more incomprehensible and in-
genuous.

The works of our historians teem with similar ap-
preciations, and it is partly because their works are full
of such that I have arrived at this conclusion, for which
I have been reproached by the illustrious philologist

70 • THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

Max Miiller : that historical works are nothing but pure
romances, absolutely removed from all reality. That
which we learn from them is never the soul of history,
but only that of the historian.

And again, because the concepts of the nations have
no common denominator, and because the same words
evoke such different ideas in different minds, I have
come to yet another conclusion, apparently paradoxical :
that written works are absolutely untranslatable from
one language to another. This is true even of modern
languages, and how much more of languages represen-
ting the ideas of extinct peoples ? There are hosts of
examples ; I will confine myself, in passing, to citing
one.

When the translations of Ibsen's plays were repre-
sented in Paris, the critics immediately discovered in
them profound and mysterious symbols, until one day
a Scandinavian critic demonstrated to them that these
profound and mysterious symbols were of their own
fabrication, that Ibsen was a very simple and straight-
forward dramatist for people who lived in Scandanavian
society, and that his personages meant to say only what
they said. When, for example, in one of his plays,
certain of his characters are advised to hunt the wolves
in which Scandanavia abounds, what is meant is merely
that they had best live the life of hunters, and this very
ordinary remark had by no means the Socialistic mean-
ing which was ascribed to it by the equally subtle and
incomprehensive critics.

It is only, I repeat, between individuals of the same
race, long subjected to the same conditions of life and
the same environment, that a little comprehension may
exist in reciprocal relations. Thanks to the hereditary
mould of their ideas, the words they exchange are then
able to evoke ideas almost similar.

THE FOUNDATIONS OF OUR BELIEFS 71

3. The Ancestral Formation of the Moral Sense.

The part played by certain moral qualities in the
destiny of peoples is altogether preponderant. I shall
have occasion to show this presently, in studying the
comparative psychology of the different nations. For
the moment I would only indicate the fact that the
moral qualities, like beliefs, are bequeathed by heredity,
and form, consequently, part of the ancestral soul. It is
in this soil, that our forefathers have bequeathed to us,
that the motives of our actions germinate, and our
conscious activity serves us only to perceive their fruits.
The general rules of our conduct have for their habitual
guides the sentiments acquired by heredity, and are
rarely influenced by reason.

These sentiments are very slowly acquired. The
moral sense has but little stability until, being fixed by
heredity, it has become unconscious, and consequently
escapes from influences of reason, always egotistical, and
most often contrary to the interests of the race. The
principles of morality which education instils have a
very slight influence ; I would say none at all if it were
not necessary to take into account those beings of neutral
character, whom Professor Ribot calls " amorphous
subjects," and who are on that vague border-line from
which the least factor may incline them towards good or
evil. It is, above all, with regard to these neutral cha-
racters that codes of law and pohcemen are of use.
They refrain from doing what the law and the police
forbid, but they do not attain to a more elevated morahty.
An intelligent education — that is, an education altogether
neglecting the discussions and dissertations of philo-
sophy — may show them that it is entirely to their interest
not to enter the poHceman's sphere of action. Such a
demonstration will strike them far more than vague

72 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

generalisations and the fatiguing dissertations on which
moral instruction is nowadays based.

The doctrine of Kant, which is to-day the basis of all
the courses of philosophy in our educational establish-
ments, and which one finds even in the manuals intended
for children, may seem sufficiently elevated ; but it is not,
as M. Maurice Barres justly observes, of the least practical
value, for it addresses itself to an abstract and ideal
person, always and everywhere identical with himself,
whereas the real man, the only man we have to live
with, varies according to time and race.

So long as our reason does not intervene our moral
sense remains instinctive, and our motives of action do
not differ from those of the most unthinking crowds.
These motives are unreasoned, in the sense that they are
instinctive, and not the product of reflection. They are
not irrational, in the sense that they are the result of
slow adaptations, induced by anterior necessities. It is
in the popular mind that they are manifested in all their
force, and this is why the instinct of the crowds is so
profoundly conservative, and so ready to defend the
collective interests of a race as long as the theorists and
orators do not trouble it.

CHAPTER II

TRADITION AS A FACTOR OF CIVILISATION — THE LIMITS
OF VARIABILITY OF THE ANCESTRAL SOUL

I. The Influence of tradition in the life of nations : — Difficulty of shaking
off the yoke of tradition— The rarity of true freethinkers— DifBculty
of establishing the clearest truths — Origins of our everyday opinions
— Slight influence of reason — Influence of traditions in institutions,
beliefs, and arts— Artists unable to shake off the influences of the
past. 2^ The Limits of variability of the ancestral soul : — The various
elements of which the soul bequeathed us by our ancestors is
cotnposed — Its heterogeneous elements — How such arise. 3. The
conflict between traditional beliefs and modern necessities — The modern
instability of opinion : — How the nations are enabled to shake off
the yoke of tradition — The impossibility of doing so suddenly —
The tendency of the Latin races to reject the influence of the past
entirely, and categorically to rebuild their institutions and laws —
The struggle between their traditions and the needs of the present
moment — Transitory and momentary beliefs are substituted for
permanent beliefs — Fickleness, violence, and influence of opinions —
Various examples — Public opinion dictates their decrees to judges,
and wars and alliances to governments — The influence of the press
and the secret power of financiers — The necessity of a- universally
accepted belief — Socialism is impotent to play this part.

I. The Influence of Tradition in the Life of
Nations.

WE may abjure the fetters of tradition that bind
us ; but how few, at any period, is the number of
those — artists, thinkers, or philosophers — capable of
shaking off the yoke ! It is given to very few to dis-
engage themselves in any degree from the ties of the
past. The persons who call themselves freethinkers may
be counted perhaps by millions ; in reality, there are

73

74 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

scarcely a few dozen to an epoch. The clearest scientific
truths often establish themselves only with the greatest
difficulty, and even when they are so established it is by
the reputations of those that uphold them, ^ rather than by
demonstration. The doctors for a whole century denied
the phenomena of magnetism, although they might
observe them everywhere, until a scientist of great
prestige affirmed that these phenomena were real.

In everyday parlance the word "freethinker" is merely
a synonym for "anti-clerical." The provincial apothecary,
who passes for a freethinker because he does not go to
mass, and persecutes the parish priest by laughing at his
dogmas, is, at the bottom, as little of a freethinker as the
priest. They belong to the same psychological family,
and are equally guided by the thoughts of the dead.

We must be able to study, in detail, the everyday
opinions which we form on everything, to see how true
is the preceding theory.

These opinions, which we suppose to be so free, are
imposed on us by our surroundings, by books, by
journals ; and according to our hereditary traditions we
accept or reject them en bloc, and most often reason
plays no part whatever in this acceptance or refusal.

' There is no error that prestige cannot palm off as a truth.
Thirty years ago the Academy of Sciences— in which one would
suppose the critical spirit to be found in its highest degree —
published, as authentic, several hundreds of letters supposed to be
written by Newton, Pascal, Galileo, Cassini, &c., which, as a matter
of fact, were one and all fabricated by an almost illiterate forger.
They teemed with vulgarities and errors, but the prestige of their
supposed authors, and of the illustrious scientist who brought them
to light, made everybody accept them. The majority of the
academicians, including the permanent secretary, had no doubts
of the authenticity of these documents until the day when the
forger admitted his guilt. When once their prestige had vanished
the style of the letters, which at first was considered marvellous,
and fully worthy of their supposed authors, was declared by every-
body to be wretched in the extreme.

TRADITION AS A FACTOR OF CIVILISATION 75

Reason is invoked often enough, but in reality it plays as
small a part in the formation of our opinions as in the
determination of our actions. To discover the principal
sources of our ideas we must go to heredity for our
fundamental opinions, and to suggestion for our secon-
dary opinions, and it is for this reason that individuals
of the same profession in the different social classes are
so much alike. Living in the same environment, in-
cessantly mouthing the same words, the same phrases,
the same ideas, they finally end by possessing ideas as
banal as identical.

In matters of institutions, beliefs, arts, or of any
elements whatever of civilisation, we are always heavily
weighed upon by our surroundings, and above all by the
past. If we do not as a rule perceive this to be so it is
because our facility in giving new names to old things
deludes us into believing that in changing these words
we have also changed the things they represent.

To make the weight of ancestral influences clearly
sensible, we must take some well-defined element of
civilisation — for instance, the arts. The weight of the
past appears clearly in these, and also the struggle
between tradition and the modern ideas. When an
artist imagines he is shaking off the burden of the past,
he is in reality only returning to more ancient forms, or
altering the most necessary elements of his art ; replacing,
for example, one colour by another, the pink of the face
by green, or abandoning himself to all those fantasies,
the spectacle of which we have been afforded by our
recent annual exhibitions. But even in his incoherent
ramblings the artist is only confirming his impotence to
throw off the yoke of tradition. A penetrating writer,
Daniel Lesueur, has written a page on these atavistic
influences, which I reproduce here, because it very clearly
develops the preceding remarks : —

76 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

" Powerlessness to create outside the limits of every-
day things. . . . Tyranny of the memory, which deceives
the artist in every attempt, and sends him straying back
to the ancient altars, to the forms that bygone generations
adored.

" The less audacious resign themselves to this servitude
of inspiration, the prisoner of ancient dreams. With a
humble and fervent brush, with a chisel that has never
trembled with the mystic fear of an unknown ideal, they
represent the visions and the symbols, they eternise the
legends, they set up the gods that no longer have
worship, that no longer give oracles, and that every new
incarnation brings a little closer to the earth.

"Again, by a plainly inevitable aberration, certain
minds, impatient of the yoke, exasperated by the haunting
of this past without which all becomes petrified — in art
more than in any other branch of human evolution —
certain artists, finally exasperated, have sought to re-
act by denying this too rigid reign of the traditions
of splendour, by insulting the conventional beauty,
the classic perfection, and the ideals of the academies
and schools.

" How shall we describe the work of our modern
artists, masters of technique, but destitute of inspiration,
who imagine themselves to produce original work by
calmly parodying the sincere awkwardness and the
anguished uncertainties of sublime initiators ?

"They, too, are copyists, but they are going in the
wrong direction. These revolutionaries have no more
true independence than those who have submitted to
the traditional. On them, as on the latter, weighs the
formidable yoke of the past.

" Symbolists by intention, in literature as in painting,
they symbolise nothing but vanished dreams and dead
emotions.

TRADITION AS A FACTOR OF CIVILISATION 77

" This malady of exasperated impotence reaches a crisis
only in the case of poets, painters, and sculptors. The
architects have up to the present escaped the fever.
They do not appear to suffer in any way from their
frightful incapacity to conceive of anything outside of
the forms which the centuries have established. Theirs
is a placid impotence, a serene nullity. They raise up
their neo-Grecian palaces, their Renaissance railway
stations, and their pseudo-Gothic villas with the most
touching unconsciousness."

2. The Limits of Variability of the
Ancestral Soul.

Such is the influence of the past ; and we must bear it
always in mind, if we would understand the evolution of
all the elements of a civilisation : how our institutions,
our beliefs, and our arts form and develop themselves,
and the enormous influence which the bygone centuries
exert over their growth. The modern man has made the
most conscientious efforts to escape from the Past. Our
great Revolution thought to cast it off for ever. But
how vain are such attempts ! A people may be con-
quered, enslaved, annihilated ; but where is the power
shall change its soul ?

But this hereditary soul, from whose influence it is so
difficult to escape, has taken centuries to form itself.
Many different elements have found place in it, and
under the influence of certain exciting causes the most
hidden of these elements may come to the surface. A
complete change of environment may develop in us
germs that are at present dormant. Hence those
possibilities of character of which I have spoken in
another work, and which certain circumstances may
bring to light. Thus it is that the peaceable nature of

78 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

a chef de bureau, a magistrate, oi^ a shopkeeper, may
contain a Robespierre, a Marat, a Fouquier-Tinville, and
certain exciting elements will bring these latent per-
sonalities to the front. Then we see Government clerks
shooting hostages, artists ordering the destruction of
monuments, and after the crisis, having come to them-
selves again, asking themselves of what aberration they
have been the victims. The bourgeois of the Convention,
having returned, after the Terror, to their peaceful
occupation as notaiy, professor, magistrate, or advocate,
more than once asked themselves, in stupefaction, how
they could have followed such bloody instincts, and
immolated so many victims. It is not without danger that
one disturbs the sediment deposited by our ancestors in the
depths of our beings. We do not know what will arise
from it : whether the soul of a hero or the soul of a bandit.

3. The Conflict between Traditional Beliefs and
Modern Necessities— The Modern Instability
OF Opinion.

Thanks to those few original minds to which every
period gives birth, every civilisation escapes, little by
little, from the fetters of tradition ; very slowly, it is true,
because such minds are rare. This double necessity of
fixity and variability is the fundamental condition of the
birth and development of societies. A civilisation only
becomes estabhshed when it creates a tradition, and it
progresses only when it succeeds in modifying this
tradition a little in each generation. If it does not so
modify tradition it does not progress ; like China, it
remains stationary. If it attempts to modify it too
quickly it loses all fixity ; it becomes disintegrated, and
is quickly doomed to disappear. The strength of the
Anglo-Saxons consists in this : that while accepting the

TRADITION AS A FACTOR OF CIVILISATION 79

influence of the past they understand how to escape its
tyranny in the necessary degree. The weakness of the
Latins, on the contrary, is that they desire entirely to
reject the influence of the past, and entirely to rebuild,
without ceasing, all their institutions, beliefs, and laws.
For this sole reason they have been living for a century
in a state of revolution and incessant upheavals, from
which they do not appear to be emerging.

The great danger of the present is that we have scarcely
any common beliefs. Collective and identical interests
are becoming further and further supplanted by dis-
similar and particular interests. Our institutions, our
laws, our arts, our education, have been established on
beliefs which are crumbling every day, and which science
and philosophy cannot replace ; and of old it was never
their part to do so.

We certainly have not escaped from the influence of
the past, since man cannot avoid that influence ; but we
no longer believe in the principles on which our entire
social edifice is built. There is a perpetual discord
between our hereditary sentiments and the ideas of the
present day. In morals, in religion, in politics, there is
no recognised authority as there used to be of old, and
no one can hope nowadays to enforce any one aim on
these essential things. It follows that the Governments,
instead of directing opinion, are obliged to submit to it,
and to obey its incessant fluctuations.

The modern man, and above all he of Latin race, is
bound by his unconscious deeires to the past, although
his reason incessantly seeks to escape from its yoke.
While awaiting the appearance of fixed beliefs, he
possesses only those beliefs which, by the sole fact that
they are not hereditary, are transient and momentary.
They are generated spontaneously by the events of the
day, like waves raised by the tempest. They are often

8o THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

vehement, but they are also ephemeral. Whatever cir-
cumstances may give rise to them, they are propagated
by contagion and imitation. By reason of the neurotic
condition of certain peoples to-day, the slightest cause
provokes excessive sentiments. Explosions of hate, fury,
indignation, enthusiasm, thunder forth at the most trivial
event. A few soldiers are surprised by the Chinese in
Langson ; an explosion of fury overthrows the Govern-
ment in a few hours. A village, hidden away in a corner
of Europe, is destroyed by floods ; there follows an
explosion of national sympathy, which displays itself in
subscriptions, charity bazaars, and what not, and makes
us send to a distance sums of money which we need
only too much to alleviate our own misery. Public
opinion no longer knows anything but extreme senti-
ment or profound indifference. It is terribly feminine,
and, like woman, has no control over its reflex move-
ments. It veers without ceasing to every wind of
external circumstance.

This extreme mobility of sentiments which are no
longer directed by any fundamental belief renders them
highly dangerous. In default of authority deceased,
public opinion becomes more and more the master of
all things, and, as it has at its service an all-powerful
press to excite it or follow it, the rdle of the Government
becomes day by day more difficult, and the policy of
statesmen more vacillating. We may discover many
useful qualities in the popular mind, but never the
thought of a Richelieu, nor even the lucid views of
a modest diplomatist having some consistency in his
ideas and conduct.

This power of pubHc opinion, so great, and so
fluctuating, extends not only to politics, but to all the
elements of civilisation. It dictates to artists their works,
to judges their decrees, to governments their conduct.

TRADITION AS A FACTOR OF CIVILISATION 8i

One of the most curious examples of its invasion of the
courts, formerly presided over by the firmest characters,
is afforded by the very instructive case of Dr. Laporte.
It will remain an example to be cited in all the treatises
of psychology.

He was called out at night to an extremely difficult
accouchement. Not having any of the necessary instru-
ments at hand, and seeing that the patient was at the
point of death, the doctor made use of an instrument of
iron borrowed from a workman in the neighbourhood,
which differed from the classic instrument only in insigni-
ficant details. But as the makeshift instrument did not
come out of a surgeon's case (a mysterious thing, enjoying
a certain prestige) the gossips of the neighbourhood
immediately declared that the surgeon was an ignorant
fool and a butcher. They stirred up all the neighbours
by their clamouring ; the rumour spread, the papers
recorded the matter ; public opinion waxed indignant ;
a magistrate was found to commit the unfortunate doctor
to prison ; then a tribunal, to condemn him to a new
imprisonment, after a long remand. But in the mean-
time the affair was taken in hand by eminent specialists,
who entirely reversed the opinion of the public, and in a
few weeks the murderer had become a martyr. The case
was carried to the Court of Appeal, and the magistrates,
continuing to follow the opinion of the public, this time
acquitted the accused.

The dangerous character of this influence of the tides
of popular opinion consists in the fact that they act un-
consciously on our ideas, and modify them without our
suspecting it. The magistrates who condemned Laporte,
as well as those who acquitted him, certainly obeyed
public opinion without realising the fact. Their sub-
consciousness became transformed in order to follow it,
and their reason only served them to find justifications

7

82 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

for the reversal of judgment, which really took place,
unknown to themselves, in their own minds.

These popular movements, so characteristic of the
present hour, deprive all governments of all stability in
their conduct. Public opinion decrees alliances : the
Franco-Russian, for example, which arose from an explo-
sion of national enthusiasm. It also declares war : for
example, the Spanish-American war, which arose from a
movement created by journalists and financiers.

An American writer, Mr. Godkin, in his recent book.
Unforeseen Tendencies of Democracy, denounces the lamen-
table part which the American papers play in respect
of public opinion, most of them being in the pay of
advertisers and speculators. A prospective war, he
says, will always be favoured by the journals, simply
because the new soldiers, victorious or defeated, will
enormously increase their sales. The book was written
'before the war in Cuba, which event has shown how just
were the author's previsions. The journals direct the
opinion of United States, but a few financiers direct the
journals from their office chairs. Their power is more
evil than that of the worst tyrants, for it is anonymous,
and it is guided by their sole personal interest, and not
that of their country. One of the great problems of the
future will be to find the means of escaping from the
sovereign and demoralising power of the cosmopolitan
financiers, who in many countries are tending more and
more to become, indirectly, the masters of public opinion,
and consequently of governments. An American paper,
the Evening Post, recently remarked that although all
other influences have little or no effect on popular move-
ments, the power of the daily press has grown immeasur-
ably ; a power the more to be feared because it is without
limit, without responsibility, without control, and is exer-
cised by anonymous and absolute individuals. The two

TRADITION AS A FACTOR OF CIVILISATION 83

most influential " public organs " of the United States,
those that obliged the public authorities to declare war,
are directed the one by an ex-cab-driver, and the other
by a very young man who has inherited millions. Their
opinion, observes the American critic, has more influence
over the manner in which the nation employs its army, its
navy, its credit, and its traditions, than have all the states-
men, philosophers, and professors of the country.

Here again we discover one of the great desiderata of
the present hour ; we see the necessity of discovering
some belief, universally accepted, which shall replace
those that have hitherto ruled the world.

We may sum up this and the preceding chapter by
saying that civilisations have always reposed on a certain
small number of beliefs, very slow to establish themselves
and very slow to disappear ; that a belief does not become
accepted, or at least does not sufficiently penetrate the
nature to become a factor of conduct, until it has more
or less attached itself to previous beliefs ; that modern
man possesses by inheritance the beliefs on which his
institutions and his moral ideas are still based, but that
these beliefs are to-day in perpetual conflict with his
reason. From this he is reduced to seeking for elaborate
new dogmas which shall be sufficiently attached to the
old beliefs, and shall yet conform with his present ideas.
In this conflict between the past and the present, that is,
between our sub-conscious nature and our self-conscious
reason, are to be found the causes of the present anarchy
of minds.

Will Socialism be the new religion which shall come
to substitute itself for the old beliefs ? It lacks one factor
of success ; the magic power of creating a future life,
hitherto the principal strength of the great religions
which have conquered the world and have endured. All

§4 THE PSYCHOLOGY OP SOCIALISM

the promises of happiness given by Socialism must be
realised here on earth. Now the realisation of such
promises will clash fatally with the economic and psycho-
logic necessities over which man has no power, and
therefore the hour of the advent of Socialism will un-
doubtedly be the hour of its decline. Socialism may
triumph for an instant, as the humanitarian ideas of the
Revolution triumphed, but it will quickly perish in bloody
cataclysms, for the soul of a nation is not stirred up in
vain. It will constitute one of those ephemeral religions
of which the same century sees the birth and the death,
and which are only of use in preparing or renewing other
religions better adapted to human nature and to the
manifold necessities to whose laws all societies are
doomed to submit. It is in considering Socialism as an
agent of dissolution, destined to prepare the advent of
new dogmas, that the future will perhaps judge the part
played by Socialism to have been not absolutely baneful.

CHAPTER III

THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIALISM TOWARDS A RELIGIOUS

FORM

I. The present tendency of Socialism to substitute itselj for the old beliefs : —
The religious evolution of Socialism — The elements of success in
Socialistic concepts considered as religious beliefs able to attach them-
selves to anterior beliefs — The sentiment of religion is an ineradicable
instinct — Man aspires not to liberty of thought but to slavery of
thought — The new doctrine responds to needs and hopes of the
present hour — The powerlessness of those who defend the old dog-
mas — The small scientific value of the dogmas of Socialism cannot
hinder their propagation — The great religious beliefs which have
swayed humanity were never born of reason. 2. The propagation of the
belief. Its apostles : — The part of apostles in establishing beliefs — Their
means of persuasion — The important part played in the world by
visionaries — The religious spirit of the apostles of Socialism— Inac-
cessible to all reasoning, they experience an imperious need to propa-
gate their faith — Their exaltation, their devotion, their simplicism,
and their passion for destruction — Their psychology is that of the
apostles of all times — Bossuet and the Dragonnades, Torquemada and
Robespierre — The baneful influence of philanthropists— Why the
apostles of Socialism must not be confounded with ordinary madmen
and criminals — How the apostles of Socialism receive additional
recruits from the various classes of degenerates. 3. The propagation
of beliefs among the masses: — All political, social, or religious concepts
finally establish their roots in the masses — The nature of the masses
or of the crowd — It is never directed by personal interest — The
collective interests of the race are manifested by the crowd — By the
crowd are accomplished such works of general interest as demand a
blind devotion — The apparent violence and real conservatism of
crowds — They are the slaves of fixity, and of mobility— Why Socialism
will not attract them for long.

I. The Present Tendency of Socialism to Substi-
tute ITSELF for the OLD BELIEFS.

HAVING considered the part played by our beliefs,
and the distant foundations of those beliefs, we
are prepared to understand the religious form of evolu-

83

86 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

tion to which the Socialism of the present day is subject,
and which will doubtless constitute its most considerable
element of success. I have already shown, in The
Crowd, that the convictions of the masses always tend to
assume a religious form. The masses are devoid equally
of scepticism and of the critical spirit. The political,
social, or religious creed accepted by them is always
adopted without discussion, and fervently venerated.

In this chapter we have to consider, not the philosophic
or economic value of the new doctrines, but only the
impression which they produce on the mind. We have
often repeated that the success of a belief depends not at
all on the proportion of truth or error it may contain, but
only on the sentiments it evokes and the devotion it
inspires. The history of all beliefs is a manifest proof of
this.

Considering their future as religious beliefs, the con-
cepts of Socialism possess incontestable elements of
success. In the first place, there can be no great conflict
between them and the old beliefs, because the latter are
on the way to disappear. In the second place, they pre-
sent themselves under extremely simple forms, and are
' thus accessible to every mind. In the third place, they
cohere readily with the beliefs which preceded them, and
are consequently able to replace them without difficulty.
We have already shown, in fact, that the doctrines of the
Christian Socialists are almost identical with those of the
other sects of Socialists.

The first point is of prime importance. Hitherto,
humanity has not been able to exist without beliefs.
When an old belief is on the point of death a new one
immediately comes to replace it. The sentiment of
religion, that is to say, the need of submitting oneself
vto a faith of some kind, whether divine, political, or
social, is one of our most imperious instincts. Man

THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIALISM 87

requires a belief so that he may direct his life mechani-
cally, and escape all efforts of reason. It is not to liberty
of thought that man aspires, but to slavery of thought.
He sometimes shakes off the yoke of the tyrants who
oppress him, but how can he deliver himself from the
far more imperious domination of his beliefs ? At first
the expression of his cravings, and above all of his hopes,
his beliefs end by modifying them, and by controlling the
instinctive region of his aspirations.

The new doctrine fits to perfection the desires and
hopes of the present hour. It appeared at the precise
moment of the final disappearance of the social and
religious beliefs by which our fathers lived, and it is
ready to renew their promises. Its mere name is a magic
word, which, like the Paradise of the past ages, sums up
our dreams and our hopes. However poor may be its
value, however problematical its realisation, it constitutes
a new ideal which at least possesses the merit of bestow-
ing on man a hope which the gods no longer give, and
illusions that science has forbidden. If it is true that the
happiness of man must, for a long time yet, reside in the
marvellous faculty of creating, and believing in, divini-
ties, we cannot misconceive the importance of the new
faith.

It increases every day, and its power becomes more
and more imperious. The ancient faiths have lost their
might, the altars of the old gods are deserted, the family
becomes disunited, institutions crumble, hierarchies dis-
appear ; only the mirage of Socialism hovers over the
heaped-up ruins. It spreads without encountering very
serious detractors. While its disciples are ardent
apostles, persuaded, as were formerly the disciples of
Jesus, that they are the possessors of a new ideal, destined
to regenerate the world, the timid defenders of the old
state of things are but slightly persuaded of the worth of

88 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

the cause they uphold. Almost their only method of
defence is painfully to mumble ancient economic or theo-
logical formulae, which were decrepit long ago, and have
now lost all their virtue. They are like so many mummies
trying to struggle in spite of their windings. In a notice
of a meeting of the Academy, M. L6on Say called atten-
tion to the astonishing mediocrity of the works destined
to oppose Socialism, despite the importance of the recom-
pense offered. Not even the defenders of paganism
showed themselves more powerless when a new god
came out of the plains of Galilee, struck the last blows at
the old tottering divinities, and gathered their heritage.

Certainly the new beliefs are not based on logic, but
what beliefs have, since the beginning of the world, ever
been so based ? Nevertheless the greater number have
presided over the blossoming of brilliant civilisations.
The irrational that endures becomes the rational, and man
ends always by accommodating himself to it. Societies
are founded on desires, beliefs, and wants ; that is to say,
on sentiments, and never on reasons or even on proba-
bilities. These sentiments are no doubt evolved accord-
ing to some hidden logic, but no thinker has ever yet
discovered its laws.

Not one of the great beliefs that have ruled humanity
was ever born of reason ; and although each has bowed
before the common law, which forces gods and empires,
one by one, to decline and die, it was never reason that
compassed their end. There is one quality that beliefs ^

' The advance of science showed at first how shght are the foun-
dations of all rehgious beliefs, but in advancing further it has also
demonstrated that they have been of immense utility, quite apart
from the part they have played in history. In the time of Voltaire
the pilgrimages to miraculous relics and waters might be regarded
as utterly ridiculous. But since the modern investigations of the
effects of suggestion we know that the curative action of miraculous
waters, relics, and Madonnas, is at least equal and often superior to
that of the most potent remedies. From the point of view of pure

THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIALISM 89

possess in a high degree, while reason has never possessed
it ; the splendid power to bind together things that have
no relation to one another, to transform the most glaring
errors into glittering truths ; absolutely to enslave the
soul, to seduce the heart, and finally to transform civilisa-
tions and empires. Beliefs are not the slaves of logic ;
they are the queens of history.

Given the seductive side of these new dogmas ; their
extreme simplicity, which renders them accessible to
every mind ; the present hatred of the populace for the
wrongful possessors of wealth and power ; the absolute
power of changing their political institutions which the
populace enjoy, thanks to universal suffrage ; given, I say,
such remarkably favourable conditions of propagation,
we may well inquire why the progress of the new doctrines
is relatively so slow, and what are the mysterious forces
that control their advance. The explanation we have
given of the origins of our beliefs and of the slowness of
their transformations will give us the answer to this
qitestion.

2. The Propagation of the Belief. Its
Apostles.

The present hour affords us the spectacle of the elabo-
ration of the Socialist religion. We are able to study the
actions of its apostles and of all the important factors

reason it may seem altogether absurd to implore the aid of gods and
saints who exist only in our imagination. Science, however, has
shown us that these prayers are not vain. The auto-suggestion pro-
duced by suf&ciently fervent prayer has comforted innumerable
minds, and has given them the necessary strength to bear up against
the cruelest trials. It is prayer, again, that strengthens faith, the
most powerful lever humanity has ever wielded. Far from de-
spising the error, we must recognise that the part it has played in
the history of humanity has always been preponderant, and that
it has constituted a motive of action that has never yet been
equalled.

90 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

whose parts I have elsewhere shown — illusions, words
and formulae, affirmation, repetition, prestige, and con-
tagion.

Perhaps it is above all through its apostles that Socialism
may be able to triumph for a moment. Only these en-
thusiasts possess the zeal indispensable to create a faith,
the magic power which has at several periods trans-
formed the world. They are skilled in the art of per-
suasion ; an art simple at once and subtle, whose actual
laws no book has ever taught. They know that the
crowd has a horror of doubt ; that they know none but
extreme sentiments ; energetic affirmation, energetic
denial, intense love, or violent hatred ; and they know
how to evoke these sentiments, and how to develop them.

They need not, necessarily, be very numerous in order
to accomplish their task. Witness the small number of
zealots who sufficed to provoke an event so colossal as
the Crusades ; an event perhaps more marvellous than
the founding of a religion, since many millions of men
were moved to leave all behind and to fling themselves
upon the East, and to recommence their task over and
over again, in spite of all reverses and terrible privations.

Whatever beliefs have once reigned in the world —
whether Christianity, Buddhism, or Islam, or merely
some political theory, such as was predominant at the
time of the Revolution — they have only been propagated
by the efforts of that particular class of converts we call
apostles. Hypnotised by the belief that has conquered
them, they are ready for every sacrifice that may propa-
gate it, and finally have no object in life but to establish
its empire. They are demt-hallucines, and their study is
the especial province of mental pathology, but they have
always played a stupendous part in the history of the
world.

They are recruited, for the most part, from those who

THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIALISM 91

possess the instinct of religion ; an instinct of which the
chief characteristic is the craving to be ruled by no
matter what being or creed, and to sacrifice all to secure
the triumph of the adored object.

The religious instinct, being a sub-conscious sentiment,
naturally survives the disappearance of the belief which
first maintained it. The apostles of Socialism, who
anathematise or deny the old dogmas of Christianity, are
none the less eminently religious persons. The nature of
their faith has changed, but they are still under the sway
of all the ancestral instincts of their race. The paradisial
society of their dreams is very like the celestial paradise
of our fathers. In these ingenuous minds, entirely at the
mercy of atavism, the old deism is objectified under the
earthly form of a providential State, repairing all injustice,
and possessing the illimitable power of the ancient gods.
Man does sometimes change his idols, but how shall he
shatter the hereditary matrices of thought that give them
birth ?

The apostle, then, is always a religious person, desirous
of propagating his faith ; but he is also, and above all, a
simplician, totally refractory to the influences of reason.
His logic is rudimentary. Necessities and the relations
of things are quite beyond his understanding. We may
form a very clear idea of his perceptions by perusing the
interesting extracts from one hundred and seventy auto-
biographies of militant Socialists which were recently
published by M. Hamon, a writer of their persuasion.
Among this number are many who profess very different
doctrines ; for Anarchism is really only an exaggeration
of Individualism, since it wishes to suppress all govern-
ment and leave the individual to himself, while Collec-
tivism implies a rigid subjection of the individual to the
State, But in practice these differences, which are
scarcely perceived by the apostles, entirely disappear.

92 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

The members of the various sects of Socialism manifest
the same hatred of society, capital, and the bourgeoisie,
and propose identical means to suppress them. The
more pacific would simply deprive the rich of their
possessions ; the more belligerent would absolutely insist
on completing this spoliation by exterminating the van-
quished.

Their declamations betray before all things the sim-
plicity of their minds. They are embarrassed by no
difficulty. To them nothing is easier than to reconstruct
a society. " We have only to expel the Government by
revolution, expropriate the wrongful possessors of social
wealth, and place it at the disposition of all. ... In a
society in which the difference between capitalists and
woi^kers had disappeared there would be no need of
Government."

M. de Vogu6 has given the following interesting
account of an interview with one of these apostles : —

" He had one of those narrow, stubborn skulls, in
which the cerebral convolutions only seize hold of two
or three ideas, of which they never let go ; a wonderful
microcosm for one desirous of investigating the distillation
which remains of the general thought of a period after
the popular alembic has deposited the essence of it in
these little retorts. Here we find the great systems of
philosophy concentrated into a few Liebig's tabloids.
My man had only two tabloids at his service ; they repre-
sented two centuries of effort of the human mind. He
explained his Utopia : a society without laws, without
ties, without hierarchies, in which each individual, abso-
lutely free, would be paid by the collectivity according to
his capacity and his needs. To all the objections one
could devise he opposed his first axiom : ' Man is natu-
rally good ; it is society that depraves him. Suppress the
social State, and there will no longer be any need of laws

THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIALISM 93

and mutual protection.' This is not exactly novel ; you
recognise the Rousseau tabloid, the residue of all the
dreams of the eighteenth century. But as I insisted on
the difficulty of producing in sufficient quantity the
necessaries of life, and of distributing them in proportion
to requirements, given the little taste that a large number
of citizens exhibit for voluntary work when their well-
being is otherwise assured, I ran up against the second
axiom : ' Thanks to the indefinite progress of science and
machinery man will obtain abundance of all he requires,
with little labour. Science will better his condition, and
will resolve the difficulties you raise.' "

Hypnotised more and more completely by the two or
three formulae he incessantly repeats, the apostle expe-
riences a burning desire to propagate the faith that is in
him, and publish to the world th» gospel which shall
raise humanity from the error in which it has hitherto
stagnated. Is not the torch he carries plain to see, and
must not all, save hypocrites and sinners, be converted ?

" Prompted by their proselytising zeal," writes M.
Hamon, " they spread their faith without fear of suffer-
ing for it. For it they break the ties of family and
friendship ; for it they lose their place, their very means
of existence. In their enthusiasm they run the risks of
imprisonment and death ; they are determined to enforce
their ideal, to effect the salvation of the populace despite
itself. They are like the Terrorists of 1793, who
slaughtered human beings for the love of humanity."

Their instinct of destruction is a phenomena found in
the apostles of all cults. One of those mentioned by M.
Hamon was anxious to destroy all monuments, and
especially churches, convinced that their destruction
" would effect the destruction of all the spiritualistic
religions." This ingenuous soul was only following
illustrious examples. Not otherwise did the Christian

94 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

Emperor Theodosius reason when in the year 389 he
destroyed all the religious monuments that had been
erected by the Egyptians on the banks of the Nile during
six thousand years, leaving upright only the walls and
columns [too sohd to be broken.

It would seem, then, that it is a psychological law, almost
universal in all ages, that one cannot be an apostle with-
out experiencing an intense craving to massacre some
one or smash something.

The apostle who is concerned only with monuments
belongs to a variety relatively inoffensive, but evidently a
little lukewarm. The perfect apostle is not satisfied with
these half-measures. He understands that when you
have destroyed the temples of the false gods you must
proceed to suppress their worshippers. What are heca-
tombs, what are massacres, when it is a question of
regenerating humanity, establishing truth, and destroying
error ? Is it not plain that the best means of suppressing
infidels is to kill all you may meet, and leave none stand-
ing but the apostles and their disciples ? This is the
programme for purists, for those who disdain the com-
promises of hypocritical and cowardly transactions with
heresy.

Unhappily the heretics are still refractory, and while
awaiting the possibility of exterminating them one must
content oneself with isolated murders and with threats.
The latter, by the way, are perfectly explicit, and leave
the future victims no illusions. One of the vanguard
of the Italian Socialists, quoted by Signor Garofalo, sums
up his programme thus : "We shall slit the throats
of all we find with arms in their hands ; the old men,
women, and children we shall pitch over the balconies or
throw into the sea."

These proceedings of the new sectaries have nothing
very novel about them ; they recur in the same form at

THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIALISM 95

various historical periods. All the apostles have thundered
at the impiety of their adversaries in the same terms, and
as soon as they have obtained the power to do so they
have employed the same tactics of swift and energetic
destruction. Mohammed converted by the sabre, the
men of the Inquisition by faggots, the men of the
Convention by the guillotine, and our modern Socialists
by dynamite. Only the implements have a little changed.

The most lamentable thing about these explosions of
fanaticism, which societies must, periodically, suffer, is
that among the converts the highest intelligence is power-
less against the ferocious seductiveness of their faith.
Our modern Socialists act and speak just as did Bossuet
with regard to the heretics, when he began the campaign
which was to end in their massacre and expulsion. In
what sulphurous terms does the illustrious prelate thunder
against the enemies of his faith ! "who love better to rot
in their ignorance than to avow it, and to nourish in their
stubborn souls the liberty to think all that it pleases them
to think, rather than to bow to the Divine authority."
One should read, in the writings of the time, the savage
joy with which the clergy welcomed the Dragonnades
and the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The bishops
and pious Bossuet were delirious with enthusiasm. "You
have exterminated the heretics," said the latter to Louis
Quatorze. " It is the great work of your reign ; it is your
crown."

The extermination was really sufficiently thorough.
This " great work " had as its consequence the emigration
of 400,000 French, the elect of the nation, to say nothing
of a considerable number of recalcitrant persons who
were burned at the stake, hung, drawn, and quartered,
or sent to the King's galleys. Not less did the Inquisition
decimate Spain ; and the Convention, France. The
Convention too possessed the absolute truth, and was

96 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

anxious to extirpate error. It had always far more the
air of an ecclesiastical council than of a political assembly.

We can easily account for the ravages committed by
these terrible destroyers of men when we know how to
read their souls. Torquemada, Bossuet, Marat, Robes-
pierre considered themselves to be gentle philanthropists,
dreaming of nothing but the happiness of humanity.
Philanthropists, whether social, religious, or political, all
belong to the same family. They regard themselves in
all good faith as the friends of humanity, and have always
been its most pernicious enemies. They are more
dangerous than wild beasts.

Mental pathologists of the present day are generally of
opinion that the sectaries of the vanguard of Socialism
belong to a criminal type, to the type they call criminal-
born. But this qualification is far too summary, and
more often than not very inexact, for it embraces
individuals belonging to very different classes, for the
most part without any kinship to the true criminal. That
there are a certain number of criminals among the pro-
pagandists of the new faith is indubitable ; but the
greater number of the criminals who qualify as Socialist
Anarchists only do so to give a political gloss to crimes
against the common law. The true apostle may commit
acts which are justly qualified as crimes by the Code, but
which have nothing criminal about them from a psycho-
logical point of view. Far from being the result of
personal interest, which is the characteristic of true crime,
their acts are most often contrary to their most obvious
interests. They are ingenuous mystics, absolutely in-
capable of reasoning, and possessed by a religious
sentiment which invades every corner of their under-
standing. They are certainly dangerous enough, and a
society which does not desire to be destroyed by them
must eliminate them carefully from its midst ; but their

THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIALISM 97

mental state is a matter for the pathologist, not for the
criminologist.

History is full of their exploits ; for they constitute
a psychologic species which has existed in every
age.

" Insane persons and fanatics with altruistic tendencies
have arisen in all ages," writes Lombroso, "even in
savage times, but then they draw their aliment from
religions. Later, they throw themselves into the political
factions and anti-monarchical conspiracies of the period.
First crusaders ; then rebels ; then knights-errant ; then
martyrs of faith or atheism.

" In our days, and more especially among the Latin
races, when one of these altruist .fanatics arises he can
only find food for his passions in the social and economic
regions.

"They are almost always the least certain and most
debated ideas that give a free rein to the enthusiasm of
fanatics. You will find a hundred fanatics for a problem
in theology or metaphysics ; you will find none for a
theorem in geometry. The more strange and absurd an
idea is the more it will drag after it the alienated and
the hysterical ; above all, in the political world, in which
every private triumph is a failure, or a public triumph ;
and this idea will often sustain these fanatics in death,
and will serve as a compensation for the life they lose or
the torments they endure."

Besides the class of apostles we have described, the
propagandists necessary to all religions, there are other
less important varieties whose state of hypnosis is limited
to a single point of the understanding. We constantly
meet, in everyday life, people who are highly intelligent,
and even eminent, yet become absolutely incapable of
reasoning on approaching certain subjects, when they are
dominated by their political or religious passion, and

8

98 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

show a surprising intolerance or incomprehension. These
are the occasional fanatics whose fanaticism grows
dangerous as soon as it is sufficiently excited. They
reason with clearness and moderation on all questions
excepting those in which their ruling passion is their only
guide. On thi? "^rrow ground they array themselves with
all the persecutmg fury of the true apostles, who find in
them, at the hour of a crisis, auxiliaries full of blind
zeal.

There is, finally, another category of Socialists, who are
not attracted by ideas alone, and whose beliefs even are
feeble. They belong to the great family of the degene-
rates. Maintained by their hereditary taints, their physical
or mental deficiencies, in inferior positions, from which
they cannot escape, they are the natural enemies of a
society to which they are prevented from adapting them-
selves by their incurable incapacity, by the morbid
heredities of which they are the victims. They are the
spontaneous defenders of doctrines which promise them,
together with a happier future, a kind of regeneration.
These outcasts form an immense addition to the crowd
of apostles. The part of our civilisations is precisely to
create, and, by a sort of fantastic humanitarian irony,
to conserve and protect, with the most short-sighted
solicitude, an ever-increasing stock of social failures,
under whose weight they will necessarily end by
foundering.

The new religion of Socialism is now entering on the
phase in which its propagation is undertaken by its
apostles. To these apostles may already be added a few
martyrs ; they constitute a new element of success. After
the last executions of Anarchists in Paris the intervention
of the police was necessary to prevent pious pilgrimages
to the tombs of the victims, and the sale of their images
surrounded with all kinds of religious attributes. Fetichism

THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIALISM 99

is the most ancient of cults, and will be perhaps the last.
A people must always have a few fetiches to embody their
dreams, desires, and hates.

Thus do these dogmas disseminate themselves, and no
reasoning can struggle against them. Their might is
invincible, for it is based on the material inferiority of the
masses, and x>n the external illusion of happiness, whose
mirage is always alluring men, and preventing them from
seeing the barriers which separate realities from dreams.

3. The Propagation of Beliefs among the
Masses.

Having explained at length in my two last works the
mechanism of the propagation of beliefs, I can only refer
the reader to them. He will there see how every civilisa-
tion is based on a small number of fundamental beliefs,
which, after a whole series of transformations, finally
appear, in the form of religions, in the popular mind.
This process of fixation is of great importance, for ideas
do not play their part in society, whether for good or ill,
until they have descended into the mind of the crowd.
Then, and only then, they become general opinions, and
then invulnerable beliefs ; that is to say, the essential
factors of religions, revolutions, and changes of civilisa-
tion.

It is into this deepest soil, the soul of the crowd, that
all our metaphysical, political, social, and religious con-
ceptions finally thrust their roots. It is of importance'
to understand this, and for this reason a study of the.'
mechanism of the mental evolution of nations and of thei
psychology of the crowd appeared to be a necessary
preface to a work on Socialism. This study was the
more indispensable in that these important subjects, and
the latter especially, were very little known. The few

100 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

writers who have studied the subject of the crowd have
arrived at conclusions which present, with sufficient
precision, either the exact reverse of the reality,' or at
least one facet of a question which comprises many.
They have hardly perceived in the crowd anything but
" an insatiable wild beast, thirsting for blood and rapine."
When we sound the subject a little we find, on the
contrary, that the worst excesses of crowds have often
arisen from extremely generous and disinterested ideas,
and that the crowd is as often victim as murderer. A
book entitled The Virtuous Masses would be as justifiable
as a book entitled The Criminal Masses. I have elsewhere
insisted at length on this point. But one of the funda-
mental characteristics which most profoundly divide the

' I may cite, as an example of the total incomprehension of this
subject, the compilation of an Italian writer. Signer Sighele, entitled
The Criminal Masses. The book contains scarcely a trace of personal
thought, and is almost entirely composed of quotations intended to
prop up the old theory that the masses must be considered as
ferocious beasts, always ready for the most atrocious crimes. In
order to make his book known to his compatriots, the author for
several months inundated the small Italian, papers with letters in
which a number of French writers were accused, with all manners
of invective, of having stolen his ideas from him. One must be
indulgent towards the meridional exaggerations of a beginner ; but
this indulgence must have its limits. I have been well accustomed
these twenty years to see my books regarded as a kind of public
mine where any one may dig without scruple, and I do not com-
plain, considering that an author must hold himself rewarded if his
ideas make headway — even if they are hardly ever quoted. I am
happy, therefore, to see Signer Sighele profit from the perusal of my
books, and will confine myself to asking him to observe that before
complaining so loudly of French writers who, for the greater part,
do not know his name, he should have refrained from availing him-
self of so many loans, and above all of such dissimulated loans such
as that which figures on page 38, lines 12 et seg., of his little work on
The Psychology of Sects, in which, after a quotation between inverted
commas, taken from one of my books, the author gives as being his
own, changing only a few words, a passage copied directly out of
my Psychology of Crowds, page 8, lines 4 et seq. (3rd edition). Other-
wise I can say with pleasure that Signer Sighele's last work is not
nearly so mediocre as his preceding one.

THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIALISM loi

isolated individual from the crowd is the fact that the
first is almost always guided by his personal interest,
while the masses are rarely swayed by egoistical motives,
but most often by collective and disinterested interests.^
Heroism and self-forgetfulness are more frequently found
in crowds than in individuals. Behind all collective
cruelty there is more often than not a belief, an idea of
justice, a desire for moral satisfaction, a complete forget-
fulness of personal interest, or readiness to sacrifice to
the general interest, which is precisely the opposite of
egoism.

The crowd may become cruel, but it is above all
altruistic, and is as easily led away to sacrifice itself as to
destroy others. Dominated by the sub-consciousness, it
has a morality and a generosity which are always tending
towards activity, whilst those of the individual generally
remain contemplative, and most frequently are limited to'
his speeches. Reflection and reasoning most frequently
lead to egoism ; and egoism, so deeply rooted in the
isolated individual, is a sentiment unknown to the crowd,
simply because the crowd cannot reason and reflect.
No religions, no empires could ever have been founded
had the armies of their disciples been able to reason and
reflect. Very few soldiers of such armies would have
sacrificed their lives for the triumph of any cause.

History can only be clearly understood if we bear
always in mind that the morale and the conduct of the
isolated man are very different tO those of the same man
when he has become part of a collectivity. The col-
lective interests of a race, interests which always imply
greater or less forgetfuhiess of personal interest, are

' This fundamental point does not appear to have been clearly
seized by the critics of. my book on The Psychology of Crowds. I
must, however, make exception of M. PiUon, who, in the Annei
Philosophique, has very clearly shown that it is by this demonstration
that I stand entirely apart from other writers on the same subject.

102 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

maintained by the crowd. Profound altruism, the
altruism of acts, and not of words, is a collective virtue.
All work of general import, demanding for its accom-
plishment a minimum of egoism and a maximum of
blind devotion, self-abnegation, and sacrifice, can scarcely
be accomplished but by crowds.

Despite their momentary outbursts of violence, the
masses have always shown themselves ready to suffer
all things. The tyrants and fanatics of all ages have
never had any difBculty in finding crowds ready to
immolate themselves to defend whatever cause. To
religious and political tyranny — ^the tyranny of the living
and the dead — they have never shown themselves re-
bellious. To become their master a man must make
himself loved or feared, and by prestige rather than by
force.

A distinguished thinker, M. Mazel, in his recent work.
La Synergie sociale, remarks, of the hecatombs of the
Terror, massacres which affected all the classes of society,
not excluding the most humble, that " nothing is more
astonishing than to see the Jacobin staff come and go,
without danger, in a city peopled with the relations or
friends of their victims, or of their countless future
victims." One cannot but perceive, in the bloody fero-
city of the men of the Terror on the one, and the sub-
mission of the victims on the other hand, those two so
contrary qualities of the crowd, already mentioned :
violence and resignation equally unlimited. The Jacobin
crowd believed all things permitted, and committed
deeds from which an isolated tyrant had recoiled. The
victims formed another crowd, which proved itself
capable of suffering all things, even death.

Occasional ephemeral violence, and more frequent
blind submission, are two opposing characteristics, but
two that we must not separate if we wish to understand

THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIALISM 103

the mind of the crowd. Their bursts of violence are
like the tumultuous waves which the tempest raises on
the sm-face of the ocean, but without troubling the sere-
nity of its profounder waters. The agitations of the
crowd have their being above immutable depths that the
movements of the surface do not reach ; and this depth
consists of those hereditary instincts whose sum is the
soul of a nation. This substi-atum is solid in proportion
as the race is ancient, and in consequence possesses a
greater fixity. To these hereditary instincts the crowd
always returns. Such is the solid woof on which every
civilisation has hitherto reposed.

The Socialists imagine that they will easily carry the
masses with them. They are wrong ; they will very
quickly discover that they will find among the masses,
not their allies, but their most implacable enemies. The
crowd may, doubtless, in its anger of a day, shatter,
furiously, the social edifice ; but, on the morrow, it will
acclaim the first-come Caesar of whose plume it shall
catch a glimpse, and who shall promise to restore to
it what it has broken. The actual dominating principle
of crowds, among nations having a long past, is not
mobility, not fickleness, but fixity. Their destruc-
tive and revolutionary instincts are ephemeral ; their
conservative instincts are of an extreme tenacity. Their
destructive instincts may, for a moment, suffer the
triumph of Socialism, but their conservative instincts
will not permit of its duration ; at least, in its present
form. In its triumph, as in its fall, the heavy arguments
of theorists will play no part. The hour is yet to sound
when logic and reason shall be called to guide the
current of History.

BOOK III

SOCIALISM AS AFFECTED BY RACE

CHAPTER I

SOCIALISM IN GERMANY

I. The theoretical bases of Socialism in Germany : — The scientific forms of
German Socialism — Difference between the fundamental principles
of German and Latin Socialism — Latin rationalism, and the evolu-
tionist conception of the world — Starting from different fundamental
principles, German and Latin Socialism arrive at practically identical
conclusions. 2. The modern evolution of Socialism in Germany : — The
artificial means by which Germany has arrived at a Socialist concept
identical with that of the Latin races — Transformations produced in
the German mind by the universal military regime — The progressive
absorption by the State in Germany — The present transformation of
Socialism in Germany — The old theories abandoned — German Social-
ism tends to assume an anodyne form.

I. The Theoretical Bases of Socialism in Germany.

IT is in Germany that Socialism has to-day made the
greatest strides, above all among the middle and
upper classes. The history of Socialism in Germany is
altogether beyond the scope of this volume, and if I
devote a few pages to it, I do so only because the evo-
lution of Socialism in Germany might, at the first view,
seem to contradict my theory of the strict relation which
exists between the social conceptions of a nation and the
mind of that nation. Between the minds of France and

of Germany there are assuredly profound diiTerences, and

104

SOCIALISM IN GERMANY 105

yet the Socialists of the two countries arrive at identical
conceptions.

Before inquiring why the theorists of two so different
races should arrive at conclusions so similar, let us first
observe in what manner the German methods of
reasoning differ from those of the Latin theorists.

The Germans, after having been for a long time
inspired by French ideas, are now inspiring these ideas
in their turn. Their provisional pontiff, for they change
him often, is to-day Karl Mai'x. His task has principally
consisted in attempting to give a scientific shape to very
old and common ideas, borrowed, as a brilliant econo-
mist, M. Paul Deschanel, has very well shown, from
French and English writers. This leaning towards a
scientific Spirit is a characteristic quality of the German
Socialists, and entirely significant of the national mind.
Far from regarding Socialism, as do their Latin equiva-
lents, as an arbitrary organisation, able to establish and
enforce itself here, there, and everywhere, they see in it
only the inevitable development of economic evolution,
and they profess an utter disdain of the geometrical con-
structions of our revolutionary rationalism. They teach
that there are no more permanent economic laws than
permanent natural laws, but only transitory forms.
" Economic ideas are by no means logical ideas, but
historical ideas." The value of social institutions is
entirely relative, never absolute. Collectivism is a phase
of evolution into which .all societies, by the mere
fact of modern economic evolution, must of necessity
enter.

This evolutionist conception of the world is certainly
as far removed as possible from the rationalism of the
Latins, which, after the fashion of our fathers of the
Revolution, wishes to destroy absolutely and absolutely
to reconstruct society.

io6 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

Although they have set out from different principles,
in which may be found the fundamental characteristics
of the two races, both German Socialists and Latin
Socialists arrive exactly at the same conclusions — recon-
struct society by making the State absorb it. The first
desire to effect this reconstruction in the name of evolu-
tion, of which, they maintain, it is the consequence.
The second wish to effect a demolition, in the name of -
reason. But the societies of the future appear to them
in identical forms. Both profess the same hatred of
private enterprise and capital, the same indifference to-
wards liberty, the same craving for forming people into
brigades, and for ruling them with an iron discipline.
Both demand the destruction of the modern State ; but
both would reconstruct it, immediately, under another
name, with an administration which would differ from
the modern State only in its possession of more extensive
powers.

2. The Modern Evolution of Socialism in
Germany.

State Socialism is, among the Latin peoples, as I shall
presently show, a consequence of their past ; of century on
century of centralisation, and the progressive develop-
ment of the central power. Among the Germans it is not
precisely this ; they have been led to a conception of the
duty of the State identical with that entertained by the
Latin peoples by certain artificial factors. With them, this
conception is the result of the transformation of character
and conditions of life which has been effected during a
century by the extension of the universal military regime.
This, by the more enlightened of the German writers,
notably by Ziegler, has been perfectly recognised. The
only means by which the mind, or at least the customs

SOCIALISM IN GERMANY 107

and the conduct of a nation, can be modified, is a rigid
military discipline. It is the only means against which
the individual is powerless to struggle. It makes him
part of an hierarchy, and prohibits all sentiments of
enterprise and independence. He may severely criticise
its dogmas, but how can he dispute the orders of a chief
who has the right of life and death over his subalterns,
and can reply to the most humble observation by
imprisonment ?

So long as it has not been universal, the military regime
has constituted an admirable means of tyranny and con-
quest. It has been the strength of all the nations who
have succeeded in developing it ; none could have
subsisted without it. But the present age has introduced
universal military service. Instead of acting, as formerly,
on a very small portion of the nation, it acts on the entire
mind of the nation. One may study best its effects in
countries where, as in Germany, it has reached its highest
development. No discipline, not even of the convent,
more completely sacrifices the individual to the com-
munity ; none more nearly approaches the social type
dreamed of by the Socialists. Prussian martinetry, in
one century, has transformed Germany, and adapted her
admirably to submit to State Socialism. I recommend
those of our young professors who are in search of
subjects a little less commonplace than those which too
often content them to a study of the transformations,
effected, during the nineteenth century, in the social and
political ideals of Germany, by the application of com-
pulsory and universal military service.

Modern Germany, ruled by the Prussian monarchy, is
not the product of the slow evolution of history ; its
present unity was effected only by force of arms, after the
Prussian victories over France and Austria. A large
number of small kingdoms, formerly very prosperous,

io8 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

were suddenly united by Prussia, under a power practi-
cally absolute. It established, on the ruins of local and
provincial life, a powerful centralisation, recalling that in
France under Louis Quatorze and Napoleon. Such
regime of centralisation must infallibly produce^ before
long, the effects which it everywhere has produced ; the
destruction of local life, above all of intellectual life ; the
destruction of private enterprise ; the progressive absorp-
tion of all functions by the State. History shows us
that these great military monarchies prosper only when
they have eminent men at their heads, and as these
eminent men are rare they never prosper for very long.

The absorption of functions by the State has been the
more easy in Germany, in that the Prussian monarchy,
having acquired a great prestige by its successful wars, is
able to exercise a power almost absolute, which is not the
case in those countries whose Governments, destroyed by
frequent revolutions, find many obstacles to the exercise
of power. Germany to-day is the great centre of authori-
tativeness, and will not much longer be the home of
any liberty whatever.

One readily understands how Socialism, which demands
/ the wider and wider extension of the intervention of the
State, should have found in Germany a soil excellently
prepared. Its development could not have been dis-
pleasing to the government of a nation so hierarchical,
so enregimented, as modern Germany. For a long time,
accordingly, the Socialists were regarded with a very
benevolent eye. They were proteges of Bismarck at first,
and might have continued so, had they not finally
become troublesome to the Government by a very
maladroit opposition.

Since then they have not been considered ; and as the
German Empire is a military monarchy, very well able,
despite its constitutional form, to become an absolute

SOCIALISM IN GERMANY 109

monarchy, the Socialists have been treated in an energetic
and summary manner. In two years only, from 1894 ^°
1896, according to the Worwartz, the courts have inflicted
on the Socialists, in press or poHtical cases, penalties to
the total sum of 226 years of imprisonment, and ;^ii2,ooo
in fines.

Whether it be that such radical proceedings have made
the Socialists reflect, or simply that the gradual enslave-
ment of the mind produced by a severe and universal
military rule has made its imprint on the already very
practical and highly disciplined mind of the German
people, it is certain that to-day Socialism among the
Germans is beginning to assume a very mild form. It is
becoming opportunist, is establishing itself on an ex-
clusively parliamentary footing, and renounces the
immediate triumph of its principles.

The extinction of the capitalist classes and the sup-
pression of monopoly no longer appears more than a
theoretic ideal, whose realisation must be very distant.
German Socialism teaches to-day that " as bourgeois
society was not created in a day, it cannot be destroyed
in a day." More and more it is tending towards union
with the democratic movement in favour of the ameliora-
tion of the working classes, of which the most practical
and surely the most useful result has been the development
of co-operative associations of workmen.

I fear, therefore, that we must renounce the hope I
have elsewhere expressed — the hope that the Germans
might be the first to undergo the instructive experience of
Socialism. Evidently they prefer to leave this task to
the Latin races.

Moreover, it is not only in practice that the German
Sociahsts are becoming more docile. Their theorists,
formerly so absolute, so unbridled, are gradually aban-
doning the essential points of their doctrines. Collectivism

no THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

itself, so powerful for so long, is now regarded as a some-
what frail and played-out Utopia, without real interest,
though good enough perhaps for the thick-headed public.
The German mind was undoubtedly too scientific and
too practical not to see, finally, the singular poverty of the
doctrine for which our French Socialists still preserve
such a religious respect.

It is interesting to note the easy and rapid evolution of
German Socialism, not only in the details of its theories,
but in their most fundamental parts. For example :
Schultze Delitsch, who at one time possessed much
influence, used to attach a great importance to the co-
operative movement, which he thought of value " to
habituate the people to rely on their own initiative for
the bettering of their condition." Lasalle and all his
followers have always upheld, on the contrary, that
" what the people required above all was a more extensive
recourse to the assistance of the State."

The doctrine of Schultze Delitsch represents the very
negation of Socialism, unless we give the word the very
vague and very general sense of the amelioration of the
conditions of existence of the greater number. This
doctrine is by no means honoured in Germany to-day.
The appeal to individual initiative, on the contrary, is a
characteristic of the peoples we are now going to consider.

CHAPTER II

SOCIALISM IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA

I. The Anglo-Saxon conceptions of the State, and of education : — A nation is
affected, not by the political system it may adopt, but by the concep-
tion it holds of the respective duties of the State and the individual —
The Anglo-Saxon social ideal— This ideal remains the same under the
most various political systems — The mental characteristics of the
Anglo-Saxon — Differences between his private and collective morality
— Solidarity and energy — Anglo-Saxon diplomatists — How the qualities
of the race are preserved by education — Characteristics of the Anglo
Saxon education — The results. 2. The social ideals of the A nglo-Saxon
workers : — Education of the workers — How they become employers —
Rarity of social failures — Why manual work is not despised among
the Anglo-Saxons — Administrative capacities of the Anglo-
Saxon workers — How acquired — Working men are often made
justices of the peace in England — How the Anglo-Saxon worker
defends his interests against his employer — Aversion of the English
working man for State intervention — The American working man —
Industry and private enterprise in America — Collectivism and anarchy
in England and America — ^Their disciples are gathered only from
inferior trades exercised by the less capable workers — ^The army of
Socialists in the United States— -It will be necessary to fight against it.

I. The Anglo-Saxon Conceptions of the State,
AND OF Education.

IT is above all in comparing the conceptions of the
State held respectively by the English and the Latins
that we perceive clearly that institutions are the outcome
of race, and also to what an extent similar names may
conceal profoundly dissimilar things. We may, as did
Montesquieu, and many another, discourse upon the
advantages, as far as we can perceive them, which a

112 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

republic offers over a monarchy, or the reverse ; but if,
under such dissimilar systems, we find nations possessing
identical social conceptions, and very similar institutions,
we must conclude that these political systems, nominally
so different, have no real influence over the minds of the
nations they are supposed to rule.

I have already insisted on this absolutely fundamental
thesis in my preceding volumes. In my volume on the
psychologic laws of the evolution of nations I have
shown, with regard to neighbouring peoples, the English
of the United States and the Latins of the Spanish
American republics, that their evolution has not been the
same, although their political institutions are very similar,
those of the latter being in general copied from those of
the former. Yet, while the great Anglo-Saxon republic
is in the heyday of prosperity, the Spanish-American
republics, notwithstanding an admirable soil and inex-
haustible natural wealth, are in the lowest slough of
decadence. Without arts, without commerce, without
industries, they have one and all fallen into decay,
bankruptcy, and anarchy. They have had so very many
men at the head of affairs that a few of them must have
been capable ; but none have been able to alter the course
of their destinies.
The political system which a nation adopts is not
/ a matter of great importance. This vain exterior
costume is, like all costumes, without real influence
', on the mind of those it covers. The thing important
; to know, in order to comprehend the evolution of a
i nation, is the conception it holds of the respective duties
i of the State and the individual. The name, be it of
i monarchy or republic, inscribed on the pediment of the
' social edifice, has no virtue of itself.

What I am about to say concerning the conception of
the State in England and America will justify the fore-

SOCIALISM IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 113

going assertions. Having already presented, in the
above-mentioned volume, the characteristics of the
Anglo-Saxon mind, I shall confine myself at present
to briefly summing them up.

Its most essential qualities may be stated in a few
words — enterprise, energy, strength of will, and, above
all, self-control ; that is to say, that internal discipline
which makes it needless for the individual to seek other
guides than himself.

The social ideal of the Anglo-Saxons is very clearly
defined, whether under the English monarchy or the
republic of the United States. It consists in reducing
the functions of the State to a minimum, and increasing
the functions of the individual to a maximum, precisely
the contrary of the Latin ideal. Railways, seaports,
universities, schools, &c., are created solely by private
enterprise, and the State — above all in America — has
never any voice in such matters.

A fact that prevents other peoples from properly
understanding the English character is that they forget
to draw a very distinct line of demarcation between the
individual conduct of the Englishman and his collective
conduct. His individual morality is, as a general thing,
very strict. The Englishman acting in the character
of a private person is extremely conscientious, extremely
honest, and respects his engagements in general ; but
English statesmen, acting in the name of the collective
interests of England, are of quite another complexion.
They are often completely without scruple. A man who
should point out to an English minister an opportunity
of enriching himself without danger by having an
elderly millionaire lady strangled, might be sure of being
immediately sent to prison ; but let any adventurer.
Dr. Jameson, for example, propose to an English
statesman — I suppose to Mr. Chamberlain — that he

9

114 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

should gather together a band of brigands ; should
invade, under, arms, the ill-defended territory of a little
republic in the south of Africa, massacre part of its
inhabitants, take possession of the country, and thus
augment the wealth of England — the adventurer is
certain to receive a cordial welcome, and to see his
proposition immediately accepted. If he succeeds,
public opinion will be in his favour. It is by pro-
ceedings analogous to these that English statesmen have
succeeded in conquering the greater number of the small
kingdoms of India. It is true that other nations employ
the same tactics in matters of colonisation ; if they are
more prominent in English affairs, it is that the English,
being abler and more audacious, more often see their
enterprises crowned with success. The wretched lucu-
brations which the makers of books call the laws of
nations, international laws, &c., &c., merely represent
a kind of code of theoretical politeness, fit only to
distract the leisure of such elderly juriconsults as are
too worn out to busy themselves in a useful occupation.
In practice they mean precisely as much as do the
formulae of protestation, consideration, and friendship
at the end of diplomatic despatches.

The Englishman entertains, with regard to the indivi-
duals of his race — other races do not exist for him—
sentiments of fellowship which no other peoples possess
in the same degree. These sentiments amount to a
community of thoughts ; the English national mind is
very solidly constituted. An Englishman isolated in
no matter what quarter of the world regards himself
as a representative of England, and considers it his
strict duty to act in the interests of his country. Eng-
land for him is the first power in the universe, the only
power, in fact, of any account.

" In the countries where he is already preponderant,

SOCIALISM IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 115

and above all in those where he wishes to be so, the
Englishman," writes the Transvaal correspondent of the
Temps, " begins by stating, as an axiom, his superiority
over all the other peoples of the world. By his per-
severance and tenacity, by his clannishness and force
of will, he introduces his manners, his pleasures, his
language, his newspapers, and even succeeds in trans-
planting his cookery ! The other nations he regards
with sovereign disdain ; even with hostility, when their
representatives show themselves inclined, or bold enough,
to dispute with him the right of a little portion of
colonial soil. In the Transvaal we have the daily proof
of this. England is not only the paramount power,
she is- the first, the one and only nation of the world."
A French deputy, M. de Mahy, has cited in Parliament
a good example of British solidarity. Uganda, as every
one knows, is the finest province of Equatorial Africa.
At one time we could have obtained it ; we hesitated.
A simple English missionary who happened to be on
the spot took it upon himself, seeing the importance
of the country, to sign a protectorate treaty with the
native chiefs ; he then set out for London, and naturally
obtained the most cordial reception from the English
Government. All his clauses were ratified, and England
became possessed of Uganda without expense. To
complete her conquest she only had to shoot down
a few thousand natives who had been converted by our
missionaries, and who, for this reason, were suspected
of favouring France.

This national unity, so rare among the Latin races,
gives England an irresistible strength. This it is that
makes their diplomacy everywhere so powerful. As the
national mind has been a fixed quantity for a long
period, their diplomatists all think in the same fashion
on essential subjects. They receive perhaps less instruc-

ii6 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

tions than the agents of any other nation, and yet they
have more unity of action and' more sense of conse-
quences than any others. They may be regarded as
interchangeable pieces. Any English diplomatist suc-
ceeding any other English diplomatist will act exactly
as his predecessor acted.' Among the Latins absolutely
the reverse is true. In Tonkin, in Madagascar, and in
our other colonies we have had precisely as many
different political systems as governors, and we know
whether the latter are often changed ! The French
diplomatist creates a political system, but is incapable of
possessing a policy.

The English system of education, though summary in
appearance, does not prevent the English from producing
a class of thinkers and scientists equal to those of the
nations possessing the most cultured schools. These
thinkers, recruited outside of the universities and societies,
are characterised above all by an originality which only
self-made minds can possess, and which is never found
among those who have been poured into identical moulds
on college benches ?

This originality of thought and style is found even in
scientific works where one would least expect it to show
itself. Let us, for instance, compare the scientific works
of Tyndall, Kelvin, Tait, &c., with the analogous works
written by our professors. On every page we find
originality, on every page expressive and striking demon-
strations, while the cold and correct works of our professors

' I used to think this theory evident to every one who had
travelled and looked about him, until the day when I expressed it
at a gathering in which several French diplomatists were present.
Except from an admiral, who was entirely of my opinion, I met with
unanimous protest. " Interchangeable diplomatists ! was not this
the negation of diplomacy ? What then was the use of intelligence ? "
&c., &c. Once more I was able to measure the width of the gulf
which separates the concepts of the Latins from those of the Anglo-
Saxons, and to judge how irremediable is our colonial weakness.

SOCIALISM IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 117

are all written on the same model. When we have read
one we have read all. Their end is by no means science
for its own sake ; they are mere preludes to examination.
This, by the way, is always carefully stated on the cover.

To resume : the Englishman seeks to make of his son
a man armed for life, able to rely on himself, and to grow
out of that perpetual tutelage which the Latins cannot
shake off. This education gives, above all, and before
all, self-control, which is the national virtue of England,
and which would have sufficed almost of itself to assure
her prosperity and greatness.

The above-mentioned principles resulting from those
sentiments whose aggregate constitute the English national
mind, we should naturally look to find them in all the
countries inhabited by the same race, and notably in
America ; and we do actually find them there. A judi-
cious observer, M. de Chasseloup-Laubat, expresses
himself as follows : —

" The manner in which the Americans understand the
functions of education in society is yet another cause of
the stability of their institutions. They hold that general
education, and not instruction, should be the aim of the
pedagogue ; excepting, of course, a minimum of facts
which they teach their children in the primary schools.
In their eyes physical, intellectual, and moral education,
that is to say, the development of the energy and endur-
ance whether of body, mind, or character, constitutes, for
every individual, the principal factor of success. Certain
it is that the power to work, the will to succeed, and the
habit of repeated effort towards a determined point are
inestimable things, for they may be applied in every
career at every moment ; while instruction, on the con-
trary, must vary according to the pupil's condition, and
the functions to which he is destined."

The ideal of the Americans is to prepare men to liye.

ii8 TFJE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

not to gain diplomas. Encouragement of initiative,
development of will, the habit of thinking for oneself —
these are the results obtained. From these ideals to the
ideals of the Latin races is a far cry. In the course of
this investigation we shall see the differences between the
two grow more and more accentuated.

2. The Social Ideals of the Anglo-Saxon
Workers.

But in England the Socialists are recruited above all
from the working classes, not from the leisured classes.
We must therefore abandon the preceding generalities,
and inquire as to the sources of instruction and education
of the Anglo-Saxon working man, and as to how his ideas
are formed.

His instruction and education differ very little from
those of the lower middle classes, being equally effected
by contact with things themselves, and not at all by the
influence of books. For this very reason there could
not exist in England that profound gulf created between
the different classes by the competitions and diplomas of
the Latin nations. You may often find in France a
factory hand or a miner who has become an employer ;
you will never find one who has become an official
engineer, since in order to do so he would have first of
all to pass through the schools that grant diplomas, and
grant them only to those who enter the schools before
twenty. The English working man, if he has sufficient
capacity, becomes first foreman and then engineer, and
cannot become an engineer in any other way. Nothing
could be more democratic, and with such a system there
should be neither wasted abilities nor social failures. No
one would entertain the idea of despising manual labour,
so disdained and ignored by our bachelors and licentiates.

SOCIALISM IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 119

since manual labour constitutes a necessary period of
transition.

We have seen what are the English workman's sources
of technical instruction ; we will now inquire into the
sources of his theoretical instruction, of that, kind of
instruction which is so necessary when it follows or
accompanies practice, instead of preceding it. The
primary school having furnished him with the rudiments
only of instruction, he himself feels the need of com-
pleting the process, and to this complementary study,
of whose utility he is sensible, he carries all the energy of
his race. This necessary complement he acquires easily
by means of evening classes, which have been founded
everywhere by private enterprise, the subjects of which
always bear on what the students learn practically in the
mine and workshop. Thus they always have the means
of verifying the utility of what they learn.

To this source of instruction we must add the free
libraries, which are founded all over the country, and
also the newspapers and journals. No comparison can
be made between the futile French journals, which have
not a reader across the Channel, and the English journals^
so rich in precise information of every kind. Journals
dealing with mechanical inventions, such as Engineering,
are read above all by workmen. The small popular
provincial papers are full of instruction with regard to
industrial and economic questions in all parts of the globe.
M. des Rouziers speaks of his conversations with workshop
hands, whose remarks showed him that they are " far better
informed of the affairs of the world than the great majoi-ity
of Frenchmen who have received what is conventionally
called a liberal education." He quotes a discussion
which he had with two of them on the question of bi-
metallism, the effects of the McKinley tariff, and so forth ;
no elegant phrases, but just and practical observations.

120 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

So much for theoretical instruction. But how does
the working man acquire those general economic ideas
which exercise his judgment and help him to manage his
affairs ? Simply by taking part in the direction of the
undertakings in which he is interested, instead of getting
them attended to by the State or by an employer. The
smallest labour centres possess co-operative, friendly,
insurance, and other societies, directed solely by working
men. Thus the Anglo-Saxon workers find themselves
daily confronted with realities, and soon learn not to
meddle with impossibilities and dreams. "Great Britain,"
writes M. des Rouziers, " by means of this multitude of
autonomous societies — co-operative societies, temperance
associations, mutual aid societies, trades-unions, &c. — is
preparing generations of capable citizens, and at the same
time prepares herself to suffer, without violent revolution,
the political transformations which may take place." As
a proof of the practical ability which the English working
man thus acquires, M. des Rouziers mentions that in one
year seventy working men were made justices of the
peace, while there were twelve in Parliament, in the last
Liberal Administration of 1892, amongst them an Under-
Secretary of State. The sums deposited by working men
in trades-unions, private societies, and savings banks, are
valued at ^320,000,000.

It is easy to perceive that these results are purely the
consequence of racial characteristics, and not of environ-
ment, from the fact that workers of different race, placed
beside English working men, and subjected to conditions
absolutely identical, present none of the qualities I have
just described. Such, for example, are the Irish hands in
the EngHsh shops. M. des Rouziers, with many others,
has noted their inferiority, which persists equally in
America. " They show no desire to better themselves ;
they are satisfied as soon as they have enough to eat." In

SOCIALISM IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 121

America, the Irish, like the Italians elsewhere, scarcely
ever exercise any other trades than those of beggar,
politician, bricklayer, servant, or rag-picker.

Thoroughly impressed with the necessities of eco-
nomics, the English working man is perfectly able to
discuss his interests with his employer, and at need to
force his demands by a strike ; but he is not jealous of
him, and does not hate him, precisely because he does
not consider him to be made of different clay. He knows
exactly what his employer gains, and consequently what
he can give. He will only risk a strike if, after due
deliberation, he decides that the disproportion between
the respective remuneration of capital and labour is too
great. " He does not seriously abuse his employer for
two reasons : if he abuses him he ruins him, and if he
ruins him he is no longer an employer." The idea of
forcing State intervention between worker and master, so
dear to our Socialists, is altogether antipathetic to the
English workman. To demand strike pay of the State
would appear at once immoral and absurd. Taine, in
his Notes sur I'Angleierre, ha,d already noticed this aversion
of the English working man for Government protection,
and opposed this characteristic aversion to the constant
appeal of the French working man to the State.

Otherwise than on the Continent, the Enghsh working
man is the victim of economic fluctuations, and of the
industrial disasters thereby occasioned ; but he has too
much of the sense of necessities and the knowledge ot
affairs to hold his employer responsible for such accidents.
He will have nothing to do with the dithyrambics on
the exploiters of labour, and infamous capital, so dear to
our Latin demagogues. He is well aware that the labour
question is not limited to the conflict between labour and
capital, but that both are subject to an equally important
factor — demand. He accordingly submits when he

ii2 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

judges a reduction of salary or a term of enforced idleness
to be inevitable. Thanks to his enterprise and his educa-
tion he can even change his calling at need. M. des
Rouziers makes mention of English masons spending six
months of the year in the United States in order to find
work there, and of other workers who, finding themselves
ruined by the importation of Australian wool, sent out
delegates to study the question on the spot. They bought
Colonial wool on the spot, and very soon, by opening a
new branch of trade, transformed the conditions of life
in their district. Such energy, enterprise, and ability
among workmen would seem very extraordinary in a Latin
country. We have only to cross the Atlantic in order to
find these qualities yet further developed among the
Anglo-Saxons of America, in which country, above all
others, no one ever counts on the State. It would never
enter an American's mind to require the State to establish
railways, ports, universities, &c. Private enterprise alone
suffices for all such matters, and is shown above all, and
to a most remarkable degree, in the construction of the
immense railroads which enmesh the great Republic.
Nothing could better show the gulf which separates the
Latin from the Anglo-Saxon mind in matters of enter-
prise and independence.

The railroad industry is regarded, in the United States,
as any other industry. Undertaken by associated indi-
viduals, it is only maintained if it be productive. The
thought would never occur to any one that the share-
holders might, as in France, be requited by the Govern-
ment. The largest lines at present running were in every
case begun on a small scale, in order to limit risk. A
line is extended only if its commencement be successful.
By this simple means the American lines have reached
a development unequalled in any European nation,
despite the protection of their Governments. Yet nothing

SOCIALISM IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 123

could be more simple than the administrative machinery
of these enormous concerns ; a very small number of
interested and responsible officials suffices to conduct
them.

" Let us examine/' wi-ites M. L. P. Dubois, " the
simple, precise, and rapid working of the administrative
machinery. No bureaux, no irresponsible clerks, pre-
paring reports which their chiefs sign without reading.
The motto is ' each for himself.' The work, necessarily
divided, is at the same time decentralised ; from top to
bottom of the scale each has his own functions and his
own responsibilities, and does all by himself ; it is the
best of all systems for discovering individual qualities.
Errand-boys and type-writer girls for writing letters to
dictation are the only personal auxiliaries. Nothing
drags : every matter must be settled within twenty-four
hours. Every one is as busy as he can be, and from the
president to the simple clerk every one works nine hours
a day. Consequently the headquarters of a great railroad
require only a small staff, and occupy only a small space ;
the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railway, which
has more than six thousand miles of lines in the Western
States, occupies only one story of its building in Adams
Street, Chicago ; the St. Paul Railway does the same.

" The president personally directs the entire business ;
he is the commander-in-chief. He is a universal person ;
all important questions of eveiy branch of the service are
submitted to him ; he is by turns engineer, economist,
and- financier ; an advocate in the courts of justice, a
diplomatist in his relations with the Legislature. He is
always in the breach. Often a president will have passed
through all the stages, active or sedentary, of the service ;
one began as machinist in the service of the company
he now directs. All are men of the high worth entirely
characteristic of the best type of the American business

124 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

man, formed by practice, and through practice led to
general ideas."

The preceding remarks enable us easily to foresee what
small chance of success our ideas of Siate Socialism, so
natural to the Latin peoples, can have among the Anglo-
Saxons. It is, therefore, not astonishing that the com-
pletest discord should immediately occur when the dele-
gates of Anglo-Saxon and Latin workers respectively
encounter one another at a Socialist congress. The
English race owes its power to the development of
private enterprise, and the limitation of the attributes
of the State. Its progress is therefore the reverse of
Socialism, and it only prospers by the fact.

Yet both England and America also have heard "the
worst forms of collectivism and even anarchy preached.
For several years we have seen the progress of Socialism
in England, but we see also that it gathers its recruits
almost exclusively from among the trades which are
badly paid, and which are consequently exercised by
the less capable workers, that is, by those " unfit," to
whom I shall subsequently devote a chapter. These
alone demand, and these alone are interested in demand-
ing, the nationalisation of the soil and of capital, and
the protection of Government intervention.

But it is more especially in the United States that the
Socialists possess an immense army of disciples ; an
army which grows every day more numerous and more
menacing, recruited from the increasing flood of immi-
grants of foreign blood, without resources, without
energy, and without adaptability to the conditions of
existence in their new country, who to-day form an
immense social drain. The United States already foresee
the day when it will be necessary to plunge into bloody
warfare to defend themselves against these multitudes.
It will be a merciless war of extermination, which will

SOCIALISM IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 125

recall, but on a far larger scale, the destruction of the
barbarian hordes to which Marius was forced, that he
might save Roman civilisation from their invasion.
Knowing the qualities of the two combatants, the issue
of the conflict is certain. ; but it will undoubtedly be
one of the most frightful struggles that have ever been
recorded by history. Yet only, perhaps, at the price of
such holocausts can the holy cause of the independence
of man and the progress of civilisation be saved ; that
cause which more than one nation seems ready to-day
to abandon.

CHAPTER III

LATIN SOCIALISM AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE LATIN

PEOPLES

I. How the actual political system of a nation is determined: — We must
go back to the roots of institutions to understand their genesis — How-
we may discover a nation's principles of government behind its
visible institutions — Theoretical institutions are only borrowed clothes.
2. The mental state of the Latin peoples : — What one understands
by the Latin peoples — Their characteristics — Quickness of intelli-
gence — Weakness of initiative and will — Love of equality and in-
difference for liberty — Need of guidance — The cult of words and
of logic — Opposition between the Anglo-Saxon and Latin mind as
regards logic — The consequences — Development of sociability
among the Latins, and weakness of solidarity — The qualities which
formerly gave the Latins superiority are to-day becoming useless —
The parts of character and intelligence in the development of
civilisations.

I. How THE ACTUAL POLITICAL SYSTEM OF A NATION
IS DETERMINED.

THE study of Socialism among the Anglo-Saxons has
shown us that among these peoples all Socialistic
theories must clash with racial characteristics which will
render their development impossible. We are about to
show that among the Latin peoples, on the contrary,
Socialism is the result of previoup^ evolution, of a system
of government to which they have, unconsciously, for a
long time submitted, and whose development they call
for more and more loudly.

On account of the importance of the subject it will be

126

LATIN SOCIALISM 127

necessary to devote to it several chapters. We can only
measure the progress of certain institutions by going
back to their roots. When an institution of any kind
is seen to prosper in any nation, we may be very certain
that it is the culmination of a whole previous process
of evolution.

This evolutionary process is not always visible, because
— above all in modern times — an institution is often
merely a borrowed garment for which the theorist is
responsible, and which, not being moulded on realities,
possesses no significance. To study institutions and
constitutions from the outside, to state that such a nation
is under a monarchy, and such under a republic, will
teach us absolutely nothing, and can only confuse the
mind. There are more countries than one — for example,
the Spanish-American republics — possessing constitutions
which are admirable on paper, and perfect institutions,
which yet are plunged into the completest anarchy,
under the absolute despotism of petty tyrants whose
fantasies know no limits. In other parts of the world,
on the other hand, we find countries like England, living
under a monarchical and aristocratic government, having
the most obscure and imperfect constitutions that a
theorist could imagine, but in which the personal liberty,
prerogatives, and functions of the citizens are more highly
developed than they have ever been elsewhere.

The best means of discovering, behind meaningless
exterior forms, the actual political system of a people
is to study, in the details of public affairs, the respective
limits of the functions of the Government and the unit ;
that is, to determine the conception which the nation
entertains of the State. As soon as we enter on this
study the borrowed garments disappear, and the realities
stand out. We then very quickly see how futile are all
theoretical discussions on the value of the exterior forms

128 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

of governments and institutions, and we clearly perceive
that a nation can no more choose the institutions that
really govern it, than a man can choose his age. Theo-
retical institutions are about as valuable as the artifices
by means of which man seeks to dissimulate his years.
The reality is not apparent to the inattentive observer, but
it none the less exists.

2. The Mental State of the Latin Peoples.

My reader knows what I mean by the phrases " Latin
peoples," " Latin races." I do not intend the term
to have an anthropological meaning, since pure races,
except among the savage peoples, have long ago all but
vanished. Among civilised peoples there are now only
what I have elsewhere called historic races ; races en-
tirely created by the events of history. Such races are
established when a people, often comprising elements
of very different origin, has been subjected for centuries
to similar conditions of environment, similar ways of
life, common institutions and beliefs, and an identical
education. Unless the populations in juxtaposition are
of too different origin — as, for example, the Irish under
the English rule, and the heterogeneous races under the
domination of Austria — they become fused, and acquire
a national spirit ; that is to say, they acquire similar
sentiments, interests, and manners of thought.

Such a work is not accomplished in a day, but a people
is formed, a civilisation is established, a historical race
comes into existence, only when the creation of a national
spirit is consummated.

Accordingly, when I speak of the Latin peoples, I
speak of the peoples which may, perhaps, have no Latin
elements in their blood, and which greatly differ from
one another, but which for centuries and centuries have

LATIN SOCIALISM 129

been subjected to the yoke of the Latin ideals. They
are Latin by sentiment, in theii- institutions, their Utera-
ture, their beliefs, and their arts, and their education
continues to maintain the Latin ideals among them.
"After the Renascence," writes M. Hanotaux, "the image
of Rome inscribed itself in ineffaceable characters on
the face of France. . . . For three centuries French
civilisation appeared nothing but a patchwork of Roman
civilisation." Is it not so still ?

In a recent essay published apropos of a new edition
of Michelet's Histoire romaine, M. Gaston Boissier up-
holds the same idea. He justly remarks that "from
Rome we draw the greater part of what we are ; when
we analyse ourselves we find a deposit of sentiments
and ideas that Rome has bequeathed to us, which nothing
has been able to take from us, and on which everything
else has its foundation."

If we wished to define in a few words the present
psychology of the Latin peoples, we might say that they
are characterised by feebleness of will, energy, and enter-
prise alike.

They, and notably the Celts, exhibit the fundamental
peculiarity of possessing at once a very lively intelligence
and very little enterprise or stability of will. Incapable
of protracted efforts, they love to be guided, and for their
failures they hold their governors, and never themselves,
responsible. Ready, as Caesar even in his time observed,
to undertake wars without motive, they are downcast at
the first reverse. They have a feminine fickleness, which
was already noted by the great conqueror as a Gallic
infirmity. This fickleness makes them the slaves of every
impulse. Perhaps their most definite characteristic is the
lack of self-control, which, enabling a man to rule him-
self, prevents him from seeking to be ruled.

Much in love with equality, extremely jealous of all

10

I30 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

superiority, they have always shown themselves indifferent
to liberty. So soon as they possess it they seek to place
it in the hands of a master, in order to enjoy that control
and government without which they cannot live. They
have played an important part in history only when they
have had great men at their head ; and for this reason, by
a long-established and secret instinct, they are always
seeking them out.

In all times they have been great speakers, lovers of
logic and of words. Very little concerned with facts,
they greatly love an idea, so long as it be simple, general,
and presented in elegant language. ^

Words and .dialectic have always been the most terrible
enemies of the Latin peoples. " The French," said von
Moltke, " always take words for facts." This is equally
true of the other Latin peoples. It was justly remarked
that, while the Americans were attacking the Philippines,
the Spanish Cortes contented themselves merely with
delivering pompous speeches and provoking crises in
which the different parties struggled for power, instead of
attempting to take the measures necessary to defend the
last remnants of their national inheritance. An immense
pyramid, higher than the highest of Egypt, might be

' This admiration of elegant language is carefully fostered by our
lamentable classical education. The " prix d'honneur " of our great
concours is always given to a dissertation in which urchins of sixteen
hold forth in the style of gods, heroes, and kings. The idea of sug-
gesting the narration, in a correct style, of the things they have seen
for themselves about themselves, in a mere stroll, for example, has
never entered the heads of their professors. To them it seems far
better to make their scholars learn to recite from books than to make
them learn to observe. What astonishing ignorance on the part of
our pedagogues ! When the dust of ages lies heavy on the Latin
peoples the philosophers of the future will be able to reconstruct
their psychology merely by perusing — if they find it — the list of the
subjects of composition which are given in our great concours. [The
concours is the competition which takes place annually between the
best pupils of the various classes of the schools and colleges of Paris
and Versailles.]

LATIN SOCIALISM 131

built with the skulls of the victims to words and logic
among the Latin races. An Anglo-Saxon complies with
facts and necessities, never throws the responsibility for
what happens to him on the Government, and cares very
little for the obvious indications of logic. He believes in
experience, and knows that men are not conducted by
reason. A Latin always deduces all from logic, and
reconstructs societies from bottom to top on plans traced
by the light of reason. Such was the dream of Rousseau,
and of all the writers of his century. The Revolution
merely applied their doctrines, and so far no amount of
deception has shaken the power of such illusions. This
is what Taine called the classic spirit : " To isolate a few
very simple and very general ideas ; then, leaving ex-
pei-ience behind, to compare and combine them ; then,
from the artificial compound thus obtained, to deduce, by
a little reasoning, all the consequences it implies." The
great writer has admirably seized on the effects of this
mental disposition on the speeches of our revolutionary
assemblies : —

" Glance through the harangues of senate and club,
the newspaper reports, the law cases, the pamphlets, all
the writings inspired by present and pressing events :
there is no conception of the human creature as one has
him before one's eyes, in the fields or in the street ; he is
figured always as a simple automaton, whose mechanism
is known. For the writer, he was but of late a musical-
box producing phrases ; for the politician, he is to-day a
musical-box producing votes, and he needs only a touch
of the finger in the proper place to make him give the
proper answer. Never a fact ; nothing but abstractions ;
strings of sentences on Nature, reason, the people, tyrants,
liberty ; like so many air-balloons idly jostling one
another in space. If we did not know that all this has
practical and terrible effect, we should think it a game of

132 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

logic, or so many school exercises, so much academic
fencing, so many combinations of the science of
ideas."

The sociability of the Latins, and especially of the
French, is very great, but their feelings of solidarity are
very feeble. The Englishman, on the other hand, is
unsociable, but he coheres strongly with all the individuals
of his race. We have seen that this cohesion is one of
the great causes of his strength. The Latins are guided
above all by individual egoism ; the Anglo-Saxons by
collective egoism.

This complete lack of solidarity, which is met with in
all the Latin peoples, is one of their most hurtful defects.
It is a racial vice, but it is very largely developed by their
education. By their perpetual examinations and compe-
titions they set the individual always in competition with
his fellows, and develop individual egoism at the expense
of collective egoism.

The absence of solidarity is visible in the least circum-
stances of life among the Latins. For a long time it has
been remarked that in the football matches against
English teams the French are always losers, simply
because the English player, preoccupied not with his
personal success, but with that of his team, passes the
ball when he is unable to stick to it, while the. French
player holds it obstinately, preferring that his side should
lose, rather than he should see the ball gained by a
comrade. The success of his team is indifferent to him ;
he is concerned only with his individual success. This
egoism will naturally follow him through life, and, if he
become a general, he will even allow the enemy to crush
a colleague whom he might have succoured, in order to
avoid procuring him a success. We had lamentable
examples of this in our last war.

This lack of solidarity among the Latins has especially

LATIN SOCIALISM 133

struck those travellers who have visited our colonies. I
have often been enabled to verify the justice of the
. following remarks of M. A. Maillet : —

" When two Frenchmen are neighbours in the colonies
it is an exceptional thing if they are not enemies. The
first sensation of the traveller who sets foot in a colony is
one of stupefaction. Every colonist, every official, every
officer even, expresses himself with regard to the others
with so much acrimony, that the traveller demands how
it is these people do not draw their revolvers."

Only by totally suppressing competition and examina-
tion in our educational system — as was done long ago in
England — can we remedy a little this dangerous defect of
egoism.

The Latin peoples have always exhibited great courage.
But their indecision, their want of foresight, their lack of
solidarity, their absence of sang-froid, their fear of respon-
sibilities, render their bravery useless so soon as they are
not thoroughly well commanded.

In modern warfare the part played by the officers
becomes more and more restricted, on account of the
size of the field of battle. The qualities that count are
coolness of head, foresight, solidarity, and a methodical
spirit, and therefore the Latin peoples will hardly see
their ancient successes renewed.

At one period, not yet very remote, wit, elegant speech,
chivalrous qualities, and literary and artistic aptitude, con-
stituted the principal factors of civilisation. Thanks to
these qualities, which they possessed in a high degree, the
Latin peoples were long at the head of all the nations.
With the industrial, geographic, and economic evolution of
the modern period the conditions of national superiority
called for very different abilities. The factors of
superiority to-day are the qualities of enduring energy,
of enterprise, and of method. These the Latin nations

134 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

hardly possess, and therefore they have had to give place
progressively to those that do possess them.

The system of education imposed on the young of the
Latin nations is gradually destroying what remains of
these qualities. Persistent will-power, perseverance, and
enterprise are vanishing one by one, and, above all, that
self-control is vanishing which allows a man to dispense
with a master.

Many events have contributed to decimate, by an often-
repeated negative selection, those individuals whose
energy, activity, and independence of mind were most
highly developed. The Latin peoples are to-day paying
for the errors of their past. In Spain the Inquisition
steadily decimated, during many centuries, all the best
elements of the country. In France the Revocation of
tlie Edict of Nantes, the Revolution, the Empire, and the
civil wars destroyed her most energetic and enterprising
sons. The insignificant increase of population observed
among most of the Latin peoples contributes to these
causes of decadence. Nevertheless, if only they were the
best elements of the population that reproduce themselves
this smallness of increase would by no means be a dis-
advantage, for the strength of a country consists not in
the number but the quality of its inhabitants. Unhappily
they are the most incapable, the weakest, and the most
imprudent who maintain the numerical level of the
population. M. Fouill^e very justly writes as follows : —

" France is practising Darwinism the wrong way about.
She is relying, for the recruiting of her population, on the
selection of inferior types. The more wealthy classes,
who by means of work and intelligence have arrived at
a certain degree of ease, and by this very fact exhibit a
certain intellectual superiority, are precisely those who
are eliminating themselves by a voluntary sterility. On
the other hand, imprudence, unintelligence, idleness.

LATIN SOCIALISM

135

insanity, and misery intellectual and material, are prolific,
and are responsible for a great proportion of the national
population. It has been remarked, and with reason, that
if a stock-breeder were to proceed on these lines he
would soon procure the degeneration of .his horses and
cattle."

This observation is extremely just. It is indisputable,
and it is a point on which I have elsewhere insisted at
length, that the worth of a nation is caused by the num-
ber of remarkable men of all kinds which it produces.
Its decadence arises from the diminution and disappear-
ance of its superior elements. In an essay which recently
appeared in the Revue scientifique M. Lapouge arrives at
analogous conclusions with regard to the Romans.

" If, for example, we consider the great Roman families,
at an interval of two hundred years, we find that the
most illustrious of the old families no longer exist, and
that in their place have risen other families, of inferior
worth, and recruited from all classes, even from the
freedmen. When Cicero lamented the decay of the
Roman virtues he forgot that in the city, and even in the
Senate, Romans of pure descent were rare ; that for one
scion of the Quirites there were ten mongrel Latins and
ten Etruscans. He forgot that the Roman city began to
be endangered as soon as it was thrown open to all, and that
if the title of citizen was incessantly diminishing in lustre,
it was because it was borne by more sons of the vanquished
than of the conquerors. When, by naturalisation after
naturalisation, the city of Rome was laid open to every
nation ; when Bretons, Syrians, Thracians, and Africans
were muffled up in the livery of the Roman citizen, too
heavy for their hearts, the Romans of pure blood had
disappeared."

The rapid progress of certain races, the Anglo-Saxon
for example, has been determined by the fact that selec-

136 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

tion, instead of operating in a reverse sense, as in Latin
Europe, has operated in the direction of progress. The
United States were populated for a long time by all the
most independent and energetic persons of the various
European countries, and notably of England. It was
necessary for a man to possess the most emphatically
virile character to dare to emigrate with his family to a
distant country, inhabited by hostile and warlike nations,
and there create a civilisation.

It is important to note here a fact that I have already

; emphasised in my later books — that nations are effaced

/ from the page of history not by the diminution of intel-

■ ligence, but by weakening of character. This law was

verified of old by the Greeks and Romans, and it is

tending to verify itself again to-day.

This is a fundamental notion, still much disputed, but
tending, however, to extend itself more and more. I
find it very well expressed in a recent work by an
English writer, Mr. Benjamin Kidd, and I cannot better
support my argument than by borrowing from him a few
passages in which he shows, with great justice and im-
partiality, what are the differences of character that
divide the Anglo-Saxon from the Frenchman, and the
historical consequences of these differences : —

" If we take France, which of the three leading
countries of Western Europe probably possesses the
largest leaven of Celtic blood, any impartial person,
who had fairly considered the evidence, would probably
find himself compelled to admit that a very strong if
not a conclusive case could be made out for placing the
French people a degree higher as regards certain intel-
lectual characteristics than any other of the Western
peoples. . . . The influence of the French intellect is,
in fact, felt throughout the whole fabric of our Wes-
tern civilisation ; in the entire region of politics, in

LATIN SOCIALISM 137

nearly every branch of art, and in every department
of higher thought. . . .

"The Teutonic peoples tend, as a rule, to obtain
the most striking intellectual results where profound
research, painstaking, conscientious endeavour, and the
laborious piecing together and building up of the fabric
of knowledge go to produce the highest effects. But the
idealism of the French mind is largely wanting. . . .
Any conscientious observer, when first brought into close
contact with ,the French mind, must feel that there is
something in it of a distinctly high intellectual order
which is not native either to the German or the English
peoples. It is felt in the current literature and the
current art of the time no less than in the highest
products of the national genius of the past."

Having recognised this mental superiority of the
French, the English author insists on the greater social
importance of character over intelligence, and shows to
what extent intelligence has been able to serve those
nations who have possessed it. Taking the history of
the colonial struggle between France and England
which occupied the latter half of the eighteenth century,
he says : —

" By the middle of the eighteenth century England
and France had closed in what — when all the issues
dependent on the struggle are taken into account — is
undoubtedly one of the most stupendous duels that
history records. Before it came to a close the shock had
been felt through the whole civilised world. The con-
test was waged in Europe, in India, in Africa, over the
North American continent, and on the high seas.
Judged by all those appearances which impress the
imagination, everything was in favour of the more
brilliant race. In armaments, in resources, in popula-
tion, they were the superior people. In 1789 the popula-

138 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

tion of Great Britain was only 9,600,000, the population
of France was 26,000,000. The annual revenue of
France was ^^24,000,000, that of Great Britain was only
;£iS>65o,ooo. At the beginning of the nineteenth cen-
tury the French people numbered some 27,000,000, while
the whole English-speaking peoples, including the Irish
and the population of the North American states and
colonies, did not exceed 20,000,000.

" By the beginning of the last decade of the nineteenth
century the English-speaking peoples, not including
subject peoples, aboriginal races, or the coloured popula-
tion of the United States, had, however, expanded to the
enormous total of 101,000,000, while the French people
scarcely numbered 40,000,000. Looking back it will be
seen that the former peoples have been successful at
almost every point throughout the world at which the
conflict has been waged. In nearly the whole of the
North American and Australian continents, and in those
parts of Southern Africa most suitable for European
races, the English-speaking races are in possession. No
other peoples have so firmly and permanently established
their position. No limits can be set to the expansion
they are likely to undergo even in the next century, and
it would seem almost inevitable that they must in future
exercise a prepondei-ating influence in the world."

Then, examining the qualities which have allowed
the English to accomplish their tremendous progress, to
administer their gigantic colonial empire with so great
success, to transform Egypt to the extent of establishing,
in a few years, the credit of a nation which was on the
brink of bankruptcy, in the highest degree of prosperity,
the author expresses himself as follows :^

" All these results were attained by simple means ; by
the exercise of qualities which are not usually counted
either brilliant or intellectual. . . . These qualities are

LATIN SOCIALISM 139

not as a rule of the brilliant order, nor such as strike the
imagination. Occupying a high place among them, are
such characteristics as strength and energy of character,
humanity, probity and integrity, and simple-minded
devotion to conceptions of duty in such circumstances
as may arise. Those who incline to attribute the very
wide influence which the English-speaking peoples have
come to exercise in the world to the Machiavelian
schemes of their rulers are often very wide of the truth.
This influence is, to a large extent, due to qualities of not
at all a showy character."

We are now prepared to understand how those nations
that are strong as to intelligence but weak as to energy
and character have always been led naturally to replace
their destinies in the hands of their governments. A
rapid survey of their past history will show us that this
form of State Socialism known as Collectivism, which is
proposed to us to-day, is, so far from being a novelty,
the natural outcome of the past institutions and heredi-
tary needs of the races in which it is to-day developing
itself. Reducing to a minimum the source of energy
and initiative which the individual must possess to
conduct his life, and freeing him from all responsibility.
Collectivism seems for these reasons well adapted to
the needs of nations whose will, energy, and initiative
have progressively decayed.

CHAPTER IV

THE LATIN CONCEPTION OF THE STATE

I. How the concepts of a people become fixed : — A nation must submit to its
traditions, and at the same time must afterwards be able to free itself
from their yoke — Few nations have possessed the plasticity necessary
to realise the double condition of variability and fixity — Impossibility
of escaping the yoke of tradition when too firmly fixed — Power of
the principles of authority among the Latins— Political and religious
authority — ^Why the Latin peoples have not suffered from their
submission to the traditional dogmas of authority until modern times,
and why they are suffering fi-om it to-day — The inevitable instability
of their governments— The conception of the State is the same in
every part of France. 2. The Latin conception of the State : — The
ancien regime — The Revolution introduced only very slight changes
— Details of administration under the old system — Constant inter-
vention of the State in the most trifling matters under the old system
— Various examples — The present development of Socialism among
the Latins is the outcome of their past institutions and their con-
ception of the State.

I. How THE Concepts of a People become Fixed.

WE have just seen, in our study of the psychology
of the Latin peoples, that their character has
favoured the development of certain institutions among
them. We have now to discover how these institutions
became fixed, and how, having become causes in their
turn, they have finally produced certain effects.

We have already seen that a civilisation can be born
only on condition that a people submits itself for a long

time to the yoke of a tradition. At the period of a

140

THE LATIN CONCEPTION OF THE STATE 141

people's formation, when the elements gathered together
are dissimilar, and have different and fluctuating in-
terests, those institutions and beliefs which are stable
have a considerable importance. ^ It is important that
these beliefs and institutions should be in agreement
with the needs and mental characteristics of the people
they are required to rule, and also that they should be
sufficiently rigid. This latter point is of fundamental
importance, and I have already insisted on it. But,
after showing that all nations must for a long time be
subjected to the yoke of tradition, I have also pointed
out the fact that they progress only on condition of their
ability to free themselves slowly from this yoke.

They never free themselves by violent revolutions.
Revolutions are always ephemeral. Societies, like animal
species, are transformed only by the hereditary addition
of small successive changes.

Few peoples have possessed the plasticity of nature
necessary to realise this double condition of fixity and
variability. Without a sufficient fixity no civilisation
can establish itself ; without a sufficient variability
no civilisation can progress.

We must always consider the institutions of a nation
as effects, which in their turn become causes. After they 1
have been maintained for a certain number of genera- 1
tions they render completely fixed those psychologic

■ The reader might find an apparent contradiction between this
proposition and that elsewhere formulated : that institutions playi
no part in the life of nations. But we were then considering
nations which had reached maturity, and in which the elements of 1
civilisation have become fixed by inheritance. Such nations cannot'
be modified by new institutions, and can adopt them even only in I
appearance. It is quite otherwise with new, that is to say, more or '
less barbarous nations, among whom none of the elements of civili-
sation have yet become fixed. The reader desirous of entering into
this subject more deeply should refer to my book The Psychology of
Peoples.

142 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

characters which at first were a little uncertain and fluc-
tuating. A lump of clay, at first plastic, quickly becomes
less so, and ends by acquiring the hardness of stone,
when it will break rather than change its form. It is
often difficult enough for a people to acquire a stable
and coherent mass of sentiments and thoughts, but it is
far more difficult for it to modify this mass afterwards.

When, by heredity, the yoke of tradition has been too
long imposed on the national mind, a nation can free
itself from this yoke only by great efforts, and most often
it cannot free itself at all. We know what violent con-
vulsions agitated the Western world at the time of the
Reformation, when the northern nations strove to set
themselves free from the religious centralisation and the
dogmatic authority which forbade them all independence,
and against which their reason revolted more and more.

The Latin peoples, they also, wished to set themselves
free from the yoke of the Past. Our great Revolution
had no other end in view. But it was too late. After
a few years of convulsions the ties of the past resumed
their empire. These bonds were indeed too powerful,
and had left too profound an imprint on the mind, to
be broken in a day.

Imbued with the necessity of the principle of authority,
the governments of the Latin peoples had for centuries
prevented them from thinking, willing, and acting, and all
education had as its aim the maintenance of this triple
interdiction. Why should the men of the Latin races
have thought and reasoned ? — religion forbade them.
Why should they have willed and acted ? — the heads of
the State willed and acted for them. In the long run the
Latin mind has bent itself to these necessities ; men have
acquired the habit of submitting themselves without
discussion to the dogmas of a Church supposed to be
infallible, and of kings by Divine right, and equally

THE LATIN CONCEPTION OF THE STATE 143

infallible. They have left the entire direction of their
thoughts and actions to their political and religious chiefs.
This submission was the necessary condition of their
unity. At certain periods it has endowed them with
great strength. When the Latins have had men of
genius at their head they have been extremely brilliant,
but they have been brilliant only at such times.

The Latin peoples had not so very much to suffer from
this absolute submission to authority before the economic
evolution of the world came to overturn the old con-
ditions of existence. So long as the means of communi-
cation were very imperfect, and the progress of industry
almost imperceptible, the nations remained isolated from
one another, and, in consequence, entirely in the hands
of their governments, which then were able completely
to control the acts of the life of nations. By means
of such regulations as those of Colbert they were able
to direct the least details of industry as easily as they
regulated the beliefs and institutions of their country.

The scientific and industrial discoveries which have so
profoundly modified the conditions of national existence
have also to an equal degree transformed the action of
governments, and have further and further reduced the
possible limits of this action. Industrial and economic
questions have become preponderant ; steam and the
telegraph, by suppressing distances, have made the whole
world a single market, impossible of control. The
Governments, accordingly, have been obliged to re-
nounce totally their old ambition to regulate industry
and commerce.

In those countries in which individual initiative had
been long developed, and in which the action of the
Government had become more and more restrained, the
consequences of the present state of economic evolution
have been easily supported. Those countries, orl the

144 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

other hand, in which the initiative of the citizen did not
exist, found themselves disarmed, and were forced to
implore the aid of those masters who for so many
centuries had thought and acted for them. It is for this
reason that some Governments are obliged, in con-
tinuance of their traditional rdle, to conduct so many
industrial enterprises. But as, for many reasons, which
we shall very soon perceive, those products of which the
production is directed by the State are obtained slowly
and expensively, thosenations which have left to the State
the execution of those enterprises which they should have
undertaken themselves are now in a position inferior to
that of the other nations.

Far from seeking, as in the past, to direct one and all
things, it is plain that the Latin Governments are anxious
to direct as few things as possible, but it is also evident
that it is now the people who demand imperiously to be
governed. In examining the evolution of Socialism
among the Latins we shall see how their craving for
control increases day by day. The State has accordingly
continued to control, protect, and rule, simply because it
could not do otherwise. It is a task which is always
becoming heavier and more difificult, which calls for
very superior, and, therefore, very rare abilities. To-day
the least error of Governments has infinite reverbera-
tions. Hence the great instability of Governments and
the perpetual revolutions to which the Latin peoples
have devoted themselves for the last century.

But we do not find in reality any instability of regime
corresponding with this instability of government. At
first sight France would seem divided into many parties ;
but all these parties, whether republican, monarchical,
or Socialist, have the same conception of the State. All
clamour for the extension of its functions. Under all
these different labels, then, there is only one party, the

THE LATIN CONCEPTION OF THE STATE 145

Latin party, and this is the reason why all these changes
of Government labels have never produced any real
change of regime.

2. The Latin Conception of the State. How the
Progress of Socialism is the Natural Out-
come of the Evolution of this Conception.

In determining the manner in which the fundamental
concepts of the Latin peoples become fixed I sufficiently
indicated the nature of their conception of the State. We
shall now perceive that the advance of Socialism is the
natural consequence of the evolution of the Latin con-
ception of the State.

To the characteristics of the Latin peoples, and of the
French especially, which are investigated in the fore-
going pages, might be added this : that there are perhaps
no peoples who have raised more revolutions, and yet
none that are more obstinately attached to their past
institutions. It might be said of the French that they
are at once the most revolutionary and the most con-
servative nation in the world. Their most bloody
revolutions have never had any other object than to
rechristen the most superannuated institutions.

The gist of the matter is this : it is easy to unroll
theories, to make speeches, to excite revolutions, but it is
not possible to change the established mind of a nation.
New institutions certainly can be imposed on it, momen-
tarily, and by force, but it quickly reverts to those of the
past, because those alone are in agreement with the
necessities of its mental constitution.

Superficial minds may still imagine that the Jievolution
effected a kind of renovation of our institutions, that it
created, on every hand, new principles, and a new society.
In reality, as Tocqueville long ago pointed out, all that it

II

146 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

did was to dash violently to the ground those elements of
the old society which were already worm-eaten, and must
have fallen a few years later by sheer old age. But the
institutions which had not yet grown old, which were in
agreement with the sentiments of the race, were touched
not at all by the Revolution, or at most but for a moment.
A few years later the very men who had sought to abolish
them re-established them under other names. It is no
easy thing to change the inheritance of twelve centuries.

Above all, the Revolution did not change and could
not have changed the conception of the State ; it could
not affect the perpetual increase of its functions, nor the
perpetual straitening of the limits of the citizen's power
of initiative : that increasing limitation which is the very
foundation of modern Socialism. And if we would com-
prehend how deeply this tendency to place everything in
the hands of the Government, and consequently to
multiply the public functions, is rooted in the soul of
the race, we have only to go back to a few years before
the Revolution. The action of the central Government
was then almost as comprehensive as to-day.

" The cities," writes Tocqueville, " can neither establish
an octroi, nor levy a tax, nor hypothecate, nor sell, nor
sue, nor farm their possessions, nor administrate them,
nor make use of their surplus receipts, without the inter-
vention of a decree of the Council, following the report
of the Intendant. All their works are carried out accord-
ing to the plans and estimates approved by decree of the
Council, which are adjudicated before the Intendant or
his subordinates, and are usually executed by the State
engineer or architect. This will greatly surprise those
who imagine that all they see in France is new. ... It
was necessary to obtain a decree of the Council to repair
the damage caused by the wind to a church roof, or to
prop up a rickety vicarage wall. The country parish

THE LATIN CONCEPTION OF THE STATE 147

furthest from Paris was subjected to this rule as well as
the nearest. I have seen parishes demand of the Council
the right to expend twenty-five pounds."

Then, as to-day, the local life of the provinces had
long been extinguished by the progressive centralisation
arising not from the autocratic power of the sovereign,
but from the indifference of the citizen. Tocqueville
says further : —

"One is astonished at the surprising ease with which
the Constituent Assembly was able to destroy, at one
blow, all the ancient provinces of France, many of which
were older than the monarchy ; and methodically to
divide the kingdom into eighty-three distinct portions, as
though the virgin soil of the New World were in question.
Nothing more surprised, and even terrified, the rest of
Europe, which was not prepared for such a spectacle. It
was, said Burke, the first time one had beheld men cut
their native land into morsels in such a barbarous manner.
It seemed, indeed, as if they were rending living bodies ;
they were only dismembering the dead."

It was this disappearance of provincial life that
facilitated the progressive centralisation of the ancien
regime.

" Let us no longer marvel," says Tocqueville, " at seeing
with what astonishing facility centralisation was re-
established in France at the beginning of this century.
The men of '89 had overthrown the edifice, but its
foundations remained, even in the minds of its des-
troyers, and on these foundations they were able to build
it anew, of a sudden, and more solidly than it was ever
built before."

Under the ancien regime the progressive absorbing
powers of the State necessitated, as to-day, an increasing
number of functionaries, and the zeal of the citizen in
getting himself nominated as such was unequalled.

148 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

"In 1750, in a provincial town of medium size, 129
persons were employed in administrating justice, and 126
were charged with executing the decrees of the former,
all of these being townsfolk. The zeal of the citizens in
filling these situations was really unequalled. As soon as
one of them became possessed of a little capital, instead
of employing it in commerce he at once expended it in
buying a place. This wretched ambition did more to
hinder the progress of agriculture and commerce in
France even than monopolies and taxation,"

We are not living to-day, as is so often repeated,
according to the principles of 1789. We are living
according to the principles set up by the ancien regime,
and the development of Socialism is only the final
blossoming of these principles, the ultimate consequence
of an ideal which has been pursued for centuries.
Formerly, no doubt, this ideal was of great utility in a
country so divided as ours, and which could be unified
only by strenuous centralisation. But, unhappily, when
once this unity was effected the mental habits thus
established could not change. When once the local life
of the provinces and the initiative of the citizen were
destroyed the latter could not spring up again. The
mental constitution of a people is slow to establish itself,
but it is also very slow to change when once established.
For the rest, everything, institutions as well as educa-
tion, has contributed to this absorption of functions by
the State, of which we shall presently show t"he lamen-
table effects. Our system of education alone would be
enough utterly to annihilate the most perdurable of
nations.

CHAPTER V

THE LATIN CONCEPTS OF EDUCATION AND RELIGION

I. The Latin concepts of education and instruction ; — The conception of
education prevalent among the Latins arises from their conception
of the State — ^The basis of our university system — How it causes
banality of thought and weakness of character in entire classes of
individuals — The normal school — Why the university is a stronghold
of levelling State Socialism — Modern attacks on the noxious effects of
our system of classical education — Comparison of the principles of
education and instruction found among the Anglo-Saxons and the
Latins respectively — The general misunderstanding on this subject —
It is not what is taught that signifies, but the manner of teaching —
Various examples of the results of our methods of teaching. 2. The
Latin concept of religion ; — The religious concept of the Latins, after
having played, for a long time, a very useful part, has now become
hurtful to them — How the Anglo-Saxons have succeeded in putting
their religious beliefs in agreement with modern necessities — Indocility
of the religious dogmas of the Latins, and its results — General con-
sequences of the Latin ideas from a Socialist point of view.

I. The Latin Concepts of Education and
Instruction.

THE Latin concept of education is the consequence
of the Latin concept of the State. Since the State
ought to direct ever5d:hing it ought also to direct educa-
tion, and since the State ought to think and act for the
citizen it must take care to imbue his mind with the
sentiment of obedience, respect for all the hierarchies,
and severely repress all signs of initiative and in-
dependence. The pupil should hmit himself to learning

149

150 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

by heart the manuals informing him of the decisions of
political, religious, philosophic, and scientific authority
on all imaginable questions. This was the old ideal of
the Jesuits, and it was skilfully completed by Napoleon.
The University, as it was created by this great despot, is
a most excellent example of the methods to be employed
in order to enslave the intelligence, weaken the character,
and transform the Latin youth into slaves or rebels.

The times have progressed, but our University has
hardly changed. On her, above all, lies the imperious
yoke of the dead. The State, the exclusive director of
instruction, has preserved a system of education which
might be called fair in the Middle Ages, when professorial
chairs were filled by theologians. This system leaves its
corroding imprint on every Latin mind. It no longer
actually proposes to itself, as it did of old, to enslave the
intelligence, to silence reason, to destroy initiative and
independence ; but as its methods have not changed the
effects produced by it are the same as ever. We possess
institutions which, regarded solely with regard to their
psychologic action, might be qualified as admirable,
when we perceive with what ingenuity they turn out
whole batches of individuals, perfect in their banality
of thought and ineptness of character. What, for
example, could be more astonishing than our Ecole
normale superieure, with its prodigious system of
examinations ? Where but in the depths of China
could we find anything comparable to it ? The greater
number of the young men who leave it have identical
ideas on every subject, and a not less identical fashion of
expressing them. A page begun by one of them might
be continued by another indifferently, without any
change of idea or of style. Only the Jesuits have suc-
ceeded in inventing an equally perfect order of discipHne.
As the professors who come from this college possess

THE LATIN CONCEPTS OF EDUCATION 151

almost exclusively the right of giving superior instruction
to the youth of France, we may be perfectly certain that
they will everywhere spread identical ideas, ideas as
fatuous as they are official. As a certain Minister of
Instruction remarked, taking his watch in his hand, we
know exactly, at any given moment, the exercise or
translation on which all budding Frenchmen, lashed to
their Procrustean beds, are employed.

Accustomed, by minute regulation, to forecast, to a
minute almost, the manner in which their time is em-
ployed, these pupils are suitably prepared, for the rest
of their lives, for the uniformity of thought and action
necessitated by State Socialism. They will always have
an intense horror of originality, of all personal effort, a
profound suspicion of all that is not specialised and
catalogued, and a somewhat envious but always reverent
admiration of hierarchies and of gold braid. All ten-
dencies to initiative or to individual effort will in them
be utterly extinguished. They may succeed in rebelling
now and again, just as they rebelled at college when their
preceptors were too severe, but they will never, as rebels,
be either disquieting or persistent. The kcoU normale,
the lycees, and other analogous institutions are thus the
most admirable schools of State Socialism of the equal-
ising and levelling kind.' It is thanks to such a system
that we are tending more and more towards this form of
government.

It is only by studying our Latin system of education
that we can well understand the present success of
Socialism among the Latins, and for this reason we are
obliged to enter into details which might seem, at first
sight, to be outside the scope of this volume.

' One of the most interesting examples to be discovered of the
effects of the Latin education is that which I give apropos of the
modern Greeks in the chapter devoted to the present condition of
the Latin peoples.

152 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

This great problem of education and instruction I
cannot, assuredly, treat briefly. I will permit myself to
refer the reader to the long chapter which I devoted to
the subject, eighteen years ago, in the second volume of
my I'Homme et les Societes. There he will find exposed at
length all the projects of reform which are to-day put
forward as novelties. Even before that time many
illustrious spirits had pointed out the dangers of our
educational system, but their voices were heard as little
as mine. Of our primary instruction it was then said by
Michel Br6al : " The half-knowledge given by these
schools recruits soldiers for disorder as surely as
ignorance." Far more surely, one should say ; the
increase of criminality, alcoholism, and anarchy among
the young men turned out by these colleges is a proof
in point. As for our University education, it was then
qualified by Renan in the following words : " The
University of France is too reminiscent of the orators
of the Decadence. The French disease of peroration,
the tendency to let everything degenerate into declama-
tion — why, one party of the University actually fosters it
by its obstinacy in disdaining the fountain-heads of
knowledge, and esteeming nothing but style and talent."
"I have no hesitation in saying," wrote Paul Bert, "that
the fundamental ignorance of our bourgeoisie, which
leaves our colleges all petrified with impotent pre-
sumption, is as injurious to the progress of the public
spirit, and to the future of our country, as the ignorance
of the children of the people who have never crossed
the threshold of a school.

Nothing has changed since then ; the same complaints
are still heard, couched in almost identical terms.

"Our education/' wrote M. C. Lauth recently, "has
taken a wrong path ; the Abstract has invaded everything,
and has stifled the sense of appHcation. ... It is the

THE LATIN CONCEPTS OF EDUCATION 153

spirit of our professoi-s, the tendency of our education,
the very root of our methods that must be transformed.
. . . This education is bad from top to bottom ; it con-
sists entirely of the worst methods of mediaeval scholasti-
cism, and seems established for no other purpose than to
produce failures, rhetoricians, and shuttlecocks."

We must, however, point out, as a happy symptom,
that a small number of University functionaries — so far,
a very small number — are beginning to see the absurdity
of our classical education. One of the most eminent,
M. Jules Lemaitre, expressed himself recently as follows :

" Despite the groping, contradictory modifications intro-
duced, these twenty-five years, into our programmes, de-
spite the additions and renovations, our secondary classical
instruction remains at root what it was under the
ancien regime. It is given more badly ; that is all.

" What does this mean ? Everything is altered ; the
discoveries of applied science have profoundly modified
the conditions of life, both for the individual and the
nation ; have altered even the face of the earth. The
universal reign of industry and commerce has begun ; we
form a democratic and industrial society, already menaced,
or rather half undermined, by the competition of powerful
nations, and the children of our petite bourgeoisie, and
many children of the lower classes, spend eight years in
learning — very badly — the very things that were formerly
taught — very well — by the Jesuit fathers, in a monarchi-
cal society, in a France whose supremacy was recognised
by Europe, at a period when Latin was an international
language, to the sons of the nobles, the magistrates, and
the privileged classes.

" Is this not a shameless anachronism ? And is not
this belief in the present utility of such an education a
monstrous prejudice ?

"One is stupefied at the poverty of the arguments

154 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

employed by the partisans of Greek and Latin, which
invariably amount to the assertion that an apprenticeship
to these languages constitutes an admirable intellectual
gymnastic ; notwithstanding the fact that this absurd
triviality has long been refuted by the most competent
observers. One of the most illustrious of modern British
scientists, Professor Bain of Aberdeen, treated of this
question at length more than twenty years ago, and
proved that the study of these languages does nothing
but exercise the memory. In conclusion he proposed
that the teaching of Greek and Latin should be limited to
one hour a week for two years. This would indeed be
the best solution to adopt in order not too greatly to
offend the prejudices of worthy middle-class folk who
imagine that a classical education confers a kind of
aristocratic superiority on their offspring."

"Our language is Latin," wrote recently one of the
most remarkable ministers our University has ever had
at its head, M. L6on Bourgeois — " our language is Latin,
but to make the Latin heritage the sole treasure of our
race — would that not be indeed to stultify it ? "

The only serious argument that the professors of the
University can invoke in defence of classical education is
that it permits them to make a living, and that apart from
their duties of instruction they are absolutely good for
nothing ; they could not even serve as translators. M.
Jules Lemaitre having declared that the professors of the
University of France had a very imperfect knowledge of
the Greek they taught, a certain professor came to the
rescue of his colleagues, and wrote the following lines,
which throw a strange light on the value of the methods
of our University : —

"The professors are fully competent if they have enough
Greek to decipher patiently, at home, with the aid of the
lexicon and standard annoted editions, the complete sense

THE LATIN CONCEPTS OF EDUCATION 155

of their text, which they then help their pupils to elucidate
in class."

A German or an Englishman reading these lines would
be confounded. In England or Germany a person who
should propose to teach a foreign language while admit-
ting that he could only "decipher it patiently with the
aid of a lexicon" would be ignominiously shown the
door of the establishment at which he should present
himself.!

The Anglo-Saxon peoples succeeded long ago in ridding
themselves of our odious educational system, and it is in
part because they have done so that they are now in the
front rank of civilisation, and have left the Latin nations
so far behind them.

Few persons, above all among professors, are yet able
to understand wherein the Anglo-Saxon conception of
education differs from the corresponding conception
among the Latins. It will therefore be useful to con-
sider, in some detail, the fundamental principles which

' We shall not be too greatly astonished at the inability of our
University to teach any tongue whatever, whether ancient or modern,
when we consider the amazing manner in which it sets to work. If
its avowed object were the total befogging of the unfortunates con-
fided to it, it would scarcely need to change its tactics. M. Fouillee
himself, one of the latest partisans of the teaching of Latin, is obliged
to recognise this fact in reproducing the following extract from an
" elementary " work which was invested with the approbation of the
highest university authorities : " The author wishes to state that he
has intentionally suppressed all such terms and questions as might
alarm the inexperience of children. This is why he speaks to them
at length of the pentrametric cassura which is sometimes replaced
by a heptametric cassura, usually accompanied by a trimetric ceesura.
He initiates them into the mysteries of synalexis, apocopis, and
apheresis, warning them that he has adopted scansion by anacrusis,
and has suppressed the choriamb in logadaic verses. He also reveals
to them the mysteries of quaternary hypermetre, of hypercatalectic
dimeter, and even of aeneasyllabic alcaics. What are we to say of
hexametric dactylic verses, of catalexis in dissylabum, of proceleus-
matic catalectic tetrameter, of docmiad dimeter, of the trochaic
hipponactaean strophe, of the trochaic hipponactaean distich ? "

iS6 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

form the basis of education and instruction in the two
races.

The principles of Anglo-Saxon education are as different
from those of the Latin system of education as the prin-
ciples which form the bases of instruction. A few lines
will make this evident.

Civilised man cannot live without discipline. This
discipline may be internal — that is to say, in the man
himself. It may be external, or outside the man him-
self ; and in that case, necessarily, enforced by others.
The Anglo-Saxon, having, amongst his hereditary charac-
teristics, which are confirmed by his education, this in-
ternal discipline, is able to direct and control himself, and
has no need of the direction of the State. The man of
Latin race, having, through his heredity and his education,
very little internal discipline, requires an external disci-
pline. This is imposed on him by the State, and it is for
this reason that he is imprisoned in a network of i^egula-
tions, which are innumerable, because they have to direct
him in all the circumstances of his life.

The principle of Anglo-Saxon education is this : the
child goes through his school life not to be disciplined
by others, but to learn to make use of his own indepen-
dence. He has to discipline himself, and by this means
acquire self-control, from which self-government is de-
rived. The young Englishman may possibly leave col-
lege knowing little of Greek, Latin, or theoretical science ;
but he leaves it a man, able to guide himself in life, and
to rely on himself alone. The methods which help him
to this result are wonderfully simple. They will be
found explained in detail in all the works dealing with
education written by Englishmen.

The Latin system of education has a precisely contrary
object. Its dream is to crush the initiative, independence,
and will of the pupil by severe and minute regulations.

THE LATIN CONCEPTS OP EDUCATION 157

His only duty is to learn, to recite, to obey. His least
acts are foreordained. The employment of his time is
regulated minute by minute. After seven or eight years
of this galley discipline all traces of initiative and will-
power are eradicated. Then, when the young man is
left to himself, how will he be able to do what he has
never learnt to do — to conduct himself ? Can we be
astonished that the Latin peoples understand so ill how
to govern themselves, and show themselves so incapable
in the commercial and industrial struggles that the
modern development of the world has engendered ? Is
it not natural that Socialism, which will merely multiply
the fetters with which the State envelopes them, should
be cordially welcomed by all those who have been so
well prepared for servitude by their college training ?

Are we to hold our professors responsible for the
lamentable results of our education ? Certainly not.
Our college professors, equally with their pupils, are
hampered by a perfect network of regulations, which
they must obey to the letter under the penalty of being
promptly cast aside. They are subordinates, timid and
needy, exposed to a thousand indignities from their
superiors, and always sensible of the weight of the
bureaucratic and pedagogic yoke. Their one dream is
of being able to give up what all consider a horrible
trade. They do not declare themselves disciples of
Socialism, but there are very few among them who do
not, in their hearts, long for the triumph of the new
doctrines. In this case they might perhaps better their
lot, and in any case they could not make their yoke
heavier or bitterer than it is to-day.

Now, having considered the respective principles of
Anglo-Saxon and Latin education, we will consider those
of instruction. The discussions recently raised on the
teaching of Greek and Latin, apropos of the remarks of

iS8 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

the author I last quoted, show how general and how
intense is the incomprehension of this subject.

Indeed, the arguments exchanged by the two sides
prove to what an extent the fundamental side of the
question is misunderstood in France. No one seems
to understand that it is not what is taught, but the
manner of teaching it, that must be changed from top to
bottom. Above all must we change this dreadful system
of concours and examinations, which, as a writer recently
remarked, "forms the most powerful means of compression
ever used by any European nation for the purpose of
confining the energies of youth, and its natural impulse
towards life." Instruction has, or at least should have
for its aim, the development of judgment, initiative,
and reflection, and these qualities are developed only
by teaching (no matter what is taught) in a certain
fashion.

Whether it be a question of teaching a language, a
science, or the general knowledge necessary to a pro-
fession, there are two methods of instruction which are
totally different, and which create equally different
methods of thought, reason, and conduct in the mind
of the pupil.

The one, which is purely theoretical, consists in teach-
ing orally or from books ; the other first of all puts the
pupil in contact with the realities and only exposes the
theory of these realities afterwards.

The consequences of these two methods may be
judged by the results they produce. Our bachelors,
licentiates, or engineers are good for nothing but theo-
retical demonstrations. A few years after the termina-
tion of their education they have completely forgotten
all their useless science. Unless the State finds them
appointments they are outcasts. If they fall back upon
industry they will not be accepted in any but the

THE LATIN CONCEPTS OF EDUCATION 159

lowest capacities until they have found time to educate
themselves all over again, which they scarcely ever
succeed in doing. If they take to writing books their
books will be nothing but feeble echoes of their college
manuals, equally deficient in originality of form and
thought.

So whether we do or do not suppress the teaching of
Latin in our colleges, or whether we substitute the teach-
ing of science, or of any other subject, does not matter ;
the final result will always be the same, for the methods
will not have changed. We shall still be creating
nothing but outcasts, stuffed with useless and soon-
forgotten formulce, incapable of judgment, reason, or
self-guidance. Are we to believe that a method of
instruction can become practical simply because it is
called so ? Does no one see that our professors cannot
change their natures and teach what they do not
know ?

Any one who does not see how thoroughly detestable
our methods of instruction are has only to consider the
results given by the most practical of our colleges. He
will find that under their deceptive label they preserve
the same exclusively bookish and theoretical character.

Let us take as example a branch of instruction which
at first sight would certainly seem the most practical of
all — that of agriculture. A report by M. M61ine, recently
inserted in the Officiel, contains some very interesting
inquiries into the results obtained, which show how
completely our general methods of instruction are based
on the same principles.

Without counting the Institut agronomic established
in Paris, France possesses eighty-two so-called schools
of agriculture, which cost more than ^160,000 annually.
They count 659 professors and 2,850 pupils, which
gives just over four pupils per professor. Thus each

i6o THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

pupil costs the State rather more than £^6 per annum.
"In many establishments there are scarcely any but
holders of bursaries, and without them it would almost
be necessary to close the school."

It is often difficult to render instruction practical when
that instruction has to be given to a large number of
pupils. This is no longer the case when a professor has
an average of four pupils. We might hope, accordingly,
that the agricultural training of these numerous schools
would be of a really useful character, and that the young
agriculturists so expensively trained might be of some
service. They have not been so, alas ! and a psychologist
knowing a little of our methods of instruction might
have foreseen the fact. The education of these pupils
has remained so theoretical that not a single cultivator
is able to make use of them, not even in the simple
capacity of farmer's boy. Being absolutely good for
nothing, these pupils who were to have regenerated our
agriculture almost always apply for State appointments,
above all as professors. There are more than 500 of
these applications for 50 annual vacancies.

" Is it not grotesque ? " concludes le Temps, in sum-
ming up M. M61ine's report. "This scientifiic education,
this grand orchestra of abstract formulae, results in
abstracting energies from agriculture instead of con-
tributing them ! These schools have only one end in
view ; to prepare not practical men, but examinees
crammed with formula; and superfluities of scientific
appearance, the better to succeed in the examinations of
the concours, and to obtain administrative situations.
Here, as elsewhere, every one is a mandarin."

What has just been said of the teaching of agriculture
may be applied to all our schools, even to those which, in
the minds of their founders, were intended only to form
workmen. The principles being the same, and the pro-

THE LATIN CONCEPTS OF EDUCATION i6i

fessors having much the same origin, the results, from
top to bottom of the scale, cannot but be identical.
Here, evidently, we have a racial vice, rendered ineradic-
able by centuries of education. As a typical example we
may cite the case of the Ecole Boulle, founded in Paris
twelve years ago at the expense of the city, with the
object of supplanting the apprenticeship of the workshop
and of turning out simple workmen exclusively. The
results obtained are given in a report presented to the
municipal council. They are lamentable. Out of 387
pupils 45 per cent. — and they were the wisest — relin-
quished, at the end of a year, a course of instruction of
which they had perceived the total inutility. Of the pupils
who followed the course of four years only thirteen were
able to find situations, and then only on the condition of
their becoming apprenticed after leaving the school.
To arrive at this miserable result the city expended an
enormous sum. Each graduate has cost it more than

;^280.

We are now not considering Greek and Latin merely.
I have cited examples which clearly show the principles
underlying our methods of instruction, and why no
amount of regulations can change them. It is the ideas
of the teachers that we must change, and consequently
their entire education, and to some extent their nature.
How are we to make them understand that theory is
useful when it follows practice, but never when it pre-
cedes it ; that it is by practical exercise, and by no other
means, that the judgment, initiative, and reason can be
developed, and that this development should be the
principal aim of education ?

One sees how difficult it would be to-day to modify
our Latin system of education. This difficulty appears
more than sufficiently proved by the complete futility of
all that has been written and repeated on this subject

12

i62 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

during the last twenty-five years. What has been the
result of so many carefully studied reports, so many
ingenious dissertations ? Have we modified ever so little
our programmes and our systems of competitive exami-
nations, except perhaps to make them more burden-
some ? Have the seas of ink poured out in asserting the
immense superiority of the English system of education
had any results other than the most insignificant reforms
— such, for example, as the introduction of football in
our schools ? ^ Our university is too old to change, or
even to understand that it should change. It will remain,
in despite of all attacks on it, an immense factory of the
unclassed, and therefore of Socialists. None of our insti-
tutions has ever exercised such a lamentable influence
over the Latin mind.

• I have often spoken in this work of the necessity of reforming
our Latin system of education from top to bottom, but without
entering into any detail, knowing perfectly that all one can say on
the subject is absolutely useless. However, since the occasion
presents itself, I will say in a few words that the only indispensable
reform would consist in suppressing nine-tenths of the subjects
taught to our scholars, and replacing them by manual work
followed by examinations admitting the successful to State appoint-
ments. This would be done not at all with the utilitarian object —
which, however, is not to be despised — of affording the pupil a
means of livelihood which a reverse of fortune might render
extremely useful, but simply to exercise his intelligence and his
judgment. Manual work compels the worker to reflect, combine,
and reason infinitely better than recitations from text-books and all
the various exercises of theme and translation. I should consider
such an education perfectly complete, if, by very simple methods, in
explaining which I will not waste my time, the pupil were imbued
with the habits of observation, reflection, and conduct which his
present education does not by any means produce. I should by no
means forget in this programme those literary and artistic ideas
which are the ornament of life, on the condition that they were
taught quite otherwise than to-day. I will not further insist on these
principles, which I believe to be absolutely incomprehensible to all
teachers and to nearly all parents. This I can understand when I
reflect what I should have thought if any one had expressed such
ideas to me when I was twenty-five.

THE LATIN CONCEPTS OF EDUCATION 163

2. The Latin Conception of Religion.

Their religious concept, after having played its useful
part, has ended by becoming as noxious to the Latin
peoples as their concepts of the State and of education,
and for the same reason — that it has not progressed, has
not evolved.

Without suddenly breaking with the beliefs of the
past, the Anglo-Saxons have been able to create a
broader religion, able to adapt itself to every modern
necessity. All too inconvenient dogmas have been
softened down, have taken a symbolic character, a
mythological value. Religion has thus been able to
exist on good terms with science ; at most it is not
a declared enemy which has to be contended with.
The Catholic dogma of the Latins, on the other hand,
has preserved its rigid, absolute, intolerant form, which
was useful, perhaps, of old, but which to-day is extremely
pernicious. It remains what it was five hundred years
ago. Without it is no salvation. It attempts to impose
the most ridiculous historical absurdities on its faithful.
No conciliation is possible ; one must submit to it or
fight it.

Before the rebellion of reason the least advanced Latin
Governments have been forced to renounce the idea of
sustaining beliefs so profoundly incompatible with the
evolution of ideas, and they have generally ended by
abstaining from all interference in the domain of
religion.

But thereupon two consequences have ensued. The
old dogmas have resumed all their empire over feeble
minds, and sway them by exhausted faiths which have no
reference to modern requirements. Others, happy at their
escape from a heavy and plainly irrational yoke, have
rejected the ancient dogmas ; but as they were told in

i64 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

youth that the whole of morality reposed on these
dogmas, and could not exist without them, they have
imagined that with their disappearance the morality
based on them must also disappear. Their morality was
in consequence considerably relaxed, and very soon they
knew no other rules of conduct than those which are
registered in the codes and enforced by the hand of the
gendarme.

Thus we see that three conceptions — those of religion,
politics, and education — have contributed to the forma-
tion of the Latin mind, and have produced its present
state. Every nation, at a certain phase of civilisation,
has become subject to these conceptions, and none could
avoid the subjection, for when the nations are weak,
ignorant, and undeveloped, it is plainly advantageous for
them, as it is for a child, that superior minds should
impose their beliefs and ideas on them, should act and
think for them. But in the progress of evolution the
moment arrives when the nations are no longer children,
but must guide themselves. Those who have not been
able to acquire the ability to do so find themselves by
this fact alone far in the rear of those who do possess
it.

The Latin peoples have not yet succeeded in acquiring
this ability. Because they have not learned to think and
act for themselves they are to-day defenceless in the
industrial, commercial, and colonial struggle ensuing
on the conditions of modern existence, in which the
Anglo-Saxons have so quickly triumphed. Victims of
their hereditary conceptions, the Latin nations turn
towards Socialism, which promises to think and act for
them, but in coming under its rule they will only
be submitting to new masters, and will thus still
further retard the acquisition of the qualities they lack.

To be a little more explicit, I should have to follow.

THE LATIN CONCEPTS OF EDUCATION 165

in the various branches of civilisation — Hterature, art,
industry, &c. — the consequences, beneficial or noxious,
according to their period, of those fundamental concep-
tions whose functions I have just very briefly delineated.
Such a vast enterprise cannot be undertaken here. It is
enough to show how the present progress of Sociahsm
among the Latin peoples is the consequence of their
conceptions, and to determine the formation of these
conceptions. We shall perceive their influence in every
page of this book, and notably when we have occasion to
consider the commercial and industrial struggles to which
all the nations are condemned by the modern develop-
ments of economics. The reader who will apply my
principles to any element whatever of civilisation, will be
struck with the light they throw on history. Of course
they are not sufficient to explain everything, but they give
significance to many facts inexplicable without them.
Above all, they explain that need of guidance which
leaves the Latin races so disconcerted and timid before
responsibilities, and which prevents them from succeed-
ing in any enterprise in which they are not firmly
conducted by their leaders ; it explains, too, their present
leaning towards Socialism. When they have great states-
men, great generals, great diplomatists, great thinkers,
great artists at their head, they show themselves capable
of the greatest efforts. But leaders of genius are not
always to be found, and in default of such the Latin
peoples are insecure. With Napoleon they dominated
the world. Later, commanded by incapable generals,
they were the victims of the most lamentable catastrophes,
and were powerless to resist those they had formerly so
easily vanquished.^ It is not without reason that these

' When we study in detail the history of our last war, we perceive,
incessantly, the gross incapacity not only of the generals placed at
the head of our armies, but of the officers of every rank without

i66 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

nations are so ready to throw the responsibility of their
reverses on their chiefs. They are worth what their
masters are worth, and they know it. But it is always a
misfortune for a nation to depend on a few personalities.
The Latin races must learn to walk alone. For the
battle-fields of to-day, whether military or industrial, are
so vast that no handful of men, however eminent, can
direct all the combatants. In the present phase of the
world the influence of men of great capacity is not indeed
vanishing, but is becoming less and less a directing force.
Authority is so dispersed that it must vanish. The
modern man must no longer rely on any guardianship
whatever, still less on that of Socialism than on any other.
He must learn to count on no one but himself. It is for
this fundamental necessity that education should prepare
him, and it is for this reason that this education must be
changed in entirety.

exception. The latter never dared to undertake the least responsi-
bility, such as seizing an unoccupied bridge, attacking a troublesome
battery, &c. Their principal care was to await orders which could
not arrive. Like those diplomatists of whom I have elsewhere
spoken, they had no doctrines which might indicate the decision to
be made in an unforeseen case, and in the absence of their chiefs.
The strength of the Germans consisted in the fact that they did
possess such a doctrine. Orders were useless to them ; moreover,
with the exception of directions, according to the expression of Von
Moltke, they received very few. Each officer knew what he had to
do in the various cases that might present themselves, and he did it
instinctively, thanks to a long-continued technical education. An
education is complete only when acts which were at first conscious,
and demanded painful efforts, have become unconscious. They are
then executed instinctively, without reflection ; but this result is
never attained by the study of books. Our general staff is beginning,
after twenty-five years of reflection, to suspect the importance of
these principles ; but the education which our officers received at
the Ecole de Guerre is still thoroughly Latin, that is to say, deplorably
bookish and theoretical.

CHAPTER VI

THE FORMATION OF SOCIALISM AMONG THE LATIN
PEOPLES

I. Absorption by the State : — Modern Socialism is, among the Latins, the
necessary consequence of their old conception of the Government —
Progressive extension of the functions of the State — How the
exigencies of the public necessitate this extension — The State is
obliged more and more to direct important undertakings, and to sub-
sidise those it does not direct — Various examples shovvring the
necessity of the intervention of the State, even though unwilling, in
matters of regulation and protection. 2. The consequences of the exten-
sion of the functions of the State: — All sentiments of responsibility and
enterprise in the citizen disappear — Regulations follow regulations
— Difficulties experienced by the State in directing everything —
Enormous expenditure necessitated by its constant intervention —
Inevitable increase of officialism and red-tape in the Latin nations —
Decay of the power of the State — Incessant demand of the public for
increased regulations — Enormous cost of making of all that is manu-
factured by the State — Fatal complications of its administration —
Various examples furnished by the war and by the navy^Cost of
making in private industry — Latin colonial administration — Identical
consequences of Latin administration in Italy and in France. 3. The
Collectivist State : — The Latin peoples need only go a little further to
arrive at pure Collectivism — They have for a long time been in the
Collectivist phase — Examination of the propositions of the Collecti-
vists, and what of them have already been carried into effect.

I. Absorption by the State.

THE preceding chapters have sufficiently shown that
Socialism, under the form of State Sociahsm, very
nearly akin to Collectivism, is in France the culmination of
a long past, the ultimate consequence of institutions

already very old. Far from deserving to be considered

167

i68 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

revolutionary, modern Collectivism should be regarded as
a highly retrograde doctrine, and its disciples as timid
reactionaries, limiting themselves to developing the most
ancient and least elevated of the Latin traditions. They
announce uproariously, every day, the approaching
triumph of their Utopias. But we were the victims of
them long before they were born.

State Socialism, or the centralisation of all the elements
of a nation's life in the hands of the Government, is
perhaps the most characteristic, the most fundamental,
and the most obstinate of all conceptions of Latin
societies. Far from having entered into a state of
decline. State absorption is only increasing every day.
For a long time limited to political functions, it was able
to extend itself to the region of industry only at a time
when industry scarcely existed. When the latter became
preponderant, political authority intervened in every
branch of industry. The State finds itself obliged, in the
matter of railways, harbours, canals, buildings, &c., to
supply the enterprise which the citizen lacks. The most
important enterprises it directs itself, exclusively, and
retains the monopoly of numerous undertakings — such
as instruction, telegraphs, telephones, tobacco, matches,
&c. — which it has successively absorbed. Those over
which it does not actually preside it is obliged to support
lest they should be endangered. Without its subsidies
most of them would promptly become insolvent. In this
manner it pays to the railway companies enormous sub-
sidies under the title of " guai'antees of interest."

It throws the sum of ;£3,74o,ooo annually to their
shareholders, to which we must add the ^1,920,000 of
the annual deficit on the lines it itself exploits.

The private enterprises — maritime, commercial, or
agricultural — which it is forced to subsidise in various
ways, are numerous ; subsidies for the shipbuilders.

SOCIALISM AMONG THE LATIN PEOPLES 169

subsidies for sugar-makers, subsidies for silkspinners,
for cultivators — the latter alone, in 1895, had risen to
;^36o,ooo. There is hardly an industry to-day that does
not claim the financial protection of the State. The most
hostile political parties are perfectly at one on this point,
and unhappily on this point alone. Considered respon-
sible for everything, and obliged to direct everything,
the State seems to possess an immense treasure which
every one can spend. Should a department require the
necessary sum to pay a director destined to ameliorate an
absolutely local industry, which brings it in a large
revenue, it applies to the State — as in the case of the
Chamber of Commerce of X., cited by the Temps — and
not to the persons interested in the progress of the
industry. Another department wishes to build a railway
of purely local importance ; it applies to the State. A
seaport wishes for improvements by which it alone would
profit : always the State. Nowhere do we find the least
trace of private enterprise or private association to under-
take or support any work whatever.

M. P. Bourde has reported a very typical example of
this state of mind. It is the story, absolutely incompre-
hensible and unreal to an Englishman or American, of
the inhabitants of the little town of X. One of their
water conduits having been broken, it suddenly received
the filth of a neighbouring sewer. To send for a work-
man and have the accident repaired was an idea too little
Latin to recommend itself to the municipal council which
met to discuss the accident. Evidently they must address
themselves to the Government. Four large newspaper
columns were scarcely sufficient to relate the steps taken.
Thanks to the intervention of a considerable number of
ministers, senators, deputies, prefects, engineers, &c., the
application made only twenty pauses in the various
administrative departments, and the final decision took

lyo THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

only two years to reach the commune. The townsfolk,
in the meantime, continued, with resignation, to drink
sewage, without once dreaming of remedying the accident
themselves. The examples given by Tocqueville show that
matters passed in exactly the same fashion under the
ancien regime.

We have here a special state of mind, which is evidently
a racial characteristic. The State is obliged to intervene
incessantly, in matters of regulation and protection ; but
if it were to lend an ear to all complaints it would intervene
far more frequently still. Last year, in the Senate, an
honourable senator made himself the organ of the claims
of a syndicate of pork butchers, who wished to induce
the Government to substitute salt pork for beef in the
diet of the army, under the pretext of protecting the
raising of little pigs. To the mind of these brave fellows,
as the natural function of the State is to protect industry, it
would necessarily guarantee the sale of their merchandise
by making salt pork obligatory by decree.

It is very unjust to reproach the Collectivists with
wishing to place all monopolies, all industries, all public
services in the hands of the Government. The dream is
not special to them ; it is that of every party ; it is the
dream of the race.

Assailed on every hand, the State defends itself as it
may ; but under the unanimous pressure of the public it is
obliged, despite itself, to protect and to regulate. Its in-
tervention is demanded on every hand, and always in the
same sense ; that is to say, in the sense of the restriction
of initiative and the liberty of the citizen, and of the
preponderant action of officials.

The laws of this kind, wh-ich are proposed every day,
are innumerable : laws to determine the purchase of
railways and their administration by the State, laws to
monopolise alcohol, laws to engross the administration of

SOCIALISM AMONG THE LATIN PEOPLES 171

the Bank of France, laws to regulate the hours of labour
in factories, laws to prevent the competition of foreign
produce, laws to give a retiring pension to all aged work-
men, laws to force the contractors for public works to
employ only certain classes of workmen, laws to regulate
the price of bread, laws to tax celibates, so as to oblige
them to marry, laws to overwhelm the large shops with
taxes for the benefit of the smaller, &c., &c.

Such are the facts ; we will now examine their
consequences.

2, The Consequences of the Extension of the
Functions of the State.

The consequences of this absorption of all functions by
the State, and its constant intervention — an absorption
and intervention demanded by all parties without excep-
tion — are altogether disastrous to the nation that suffers
them, or, rather, enforces them. This perpetual interven-
tion is ending by entirely destroying in the breast of the
citizen those sentiments of initiative and responsibility
of which he already possessed so little. It obliges the
State to direct, at great expense, owing to the complexity
of its mechanism, such undertakings as private persons,
with the motive power of personal interest, might suc-
cessfully manage at far less expense, as they do in other
countries.

These results have long been verified by economists.

" The concentration of economic power in the hands
of the State," writes M. Leroy-Beaulieu, "is leading, in the
new France, to the ruin of private initiative, and the
degeneration of individual will and energy. It must end
in a kind of bureaucratic servitude or parliamentary
Csesarism, which will at once enervate and demoralise
an impoverished country,"

Never were the economists more visibly right ; yet

172 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

never have their words been more wasted on the desert
air. No one contests their assertions, yet none the less
we continue to advance further and further along a road
which will lead the nations that tread it to the last degree
of decadence and servitude.

The truth is that by the very fact that they have entered
on this road they are forced to tread it to the end. Only by
means of an immense and ever-increasing army of agents
is the State able to succeed in directing everything, in
administi-ating everything, in centralising everything.
The annual cost of these agents, twenty-five years ago,
was scarcely ;^i 2,000,000 ; it is now ^£20,000,000, and
their number must inevitably increase in immense pro-
portions. The instruction given by the State is no longer
of much use but to create functionaries for the State.
Half the pupils of our lycees are destined for public service.
Only the failures enter commerce, agriculture, or industry ;
the exact contrary takes place in England and America.

The Government defends itself as well as it can against
this invasion of diplomes, whom their hereditary aptitudes
and their debasing education have not endowed with the
amount of initiative necessary to create independent situ-
ations for themselves. They have application only for
learning the largest text-books by heart ; in this matter
nothing disheartens them. The State is incessantly
complicating the subjects of its examinations, and
making its text -books thicker and thicker; nothing
discourages the candidates. With one quarter of the
patience necessary to learn sickening trivialities by
heart the greater number of them would make their
fortunes in industry ; but they do not even dream of such
a thing. It has been said with reason that our century is
the century of examinations. It is precisely the Chinese
system ; and, as Renan has observed, it has produced, in
that nation of mandarins, an incurable senility.

SOCIALISM AMONG THE LATIN PEOPLES 173

It is, in fact, the bureaucracy that governs France
to-day, and will necessarily govern her more and more.
The power of the State is scattered among innumerable
hands. The irresistible need of the Latins to be governed
is accompanied by a not less irresistible need of exercising
authority ; hence all the agents who represent the State
govern one another according to a rigid and trivially
detailed hierarchy, which descends by successive degrees
from the minister to the humblest cantonnier. Each
official possesses only the most narrowly limited func-
tions, and therefore cannot perform the most trivial act
without having recourse to a whole hierarchy above him.
He is imprisoned inextricably in a network of regulations
and complications, the weight of which necessarily falls
on all those who have occasion to apply to him..

This network of regulations extends itself every day,
in proportion as the initiative of the citizen becomes
feebler. As Leon Say observed : "The cry becomes
always louder and louder for more and more microscopic
regulations."

Harassed by . the incessant appeals of a public greedy
of tutelage, the State legislates and regulates without
pause. Obliged to direct everything, to foresee every-
thing, it enters into the most trifling details. A man is
run over by a carriage ; a clock is stolen from a mairie ;
immediately a commission is nominated and charged
with the elaboration of a regulation, and this regulation
always occupies a whole volume. According to a well-
informed journal, the new regulation drawn up in respect
of the circulation of cabs and other means of transport in
Paris by a commission entrusted with the task of simpli-
fying the existing state of things will comprise no fewer
than 425 articles !

This prodigious need of regulation does not appear to
be new in history. It has already appeared among many

174 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

peoples, and notably among the Romans and the Byzan-
tines, at their periods of lowest decadence, and it must
have contributed greatly to hasten the final dissolution.
M. Gaston Boissier remarks that at the end of the Roman
Empire, " never had administrative triviality been carried
so far. This period w^as before all things a scribbling
age. An imperial functionary never stirred without his
secretaries and stenographers."

From these complicated hierarchies and this narrow
regulation it results, first of all, that everything the State
produces is produced in a very slow and costly way.
Not for nothing can the citizens of a country refuse to
, direct their own affairs, and confide all to the hands of
the State. The latter makes them pay dearly for its
intervention. As a very typical example of this, I may
cite the various railroads which the departments have
forced the State to construct.

In obedience to the pressure of the public, the Govern-
ment has successively constructed, and directly adminis-
tered, nearly 1,760 miles of lines, which cost, according
to the report of the Budget Commission of 1895, the
enormous sum of ;^5i,ooo,ooo, including the annual
deficit capitalised. The annual profits are ;£36o,ooo, and
the expenses ;^2, 280,000 ; the annual deficit, therefore, is
about ;£i,920,ooo. This deficit is partly accounted for by
the enormous expenses of working. While the working
• expenses of great companies such, for example, as the
Paris-Lyon and the Orleans, amount to 50 per cent., little
interested in economy though these companies be — since
the State guarantees them a minimum of interest — the
working expenses of the State railways reach the incredible
figure of 77 per cent. 1

" It is impossible," writes M. Leroy-Beaulieu, " ade-
quately to express to what a decay of private initiative the
conduct of public works in France is leading. Habituated

SOCIALISM AMONG THE LATIN PEOPLES 175

to rely on the subventions of the commune, department,
or central power, the divers agglomerations of inhabitants,
and above all in the country, are no longer capable of
undertaking any matter whatever by themselves, nor of
agreeing upon any point. I have known villages of
200 or 300 inhabitants, belonging to a large and scattered
commune, to wait for years and humbly to solicit aid
in the matter of a well which was indispensable to
them, and which £8 or £12, or a contribution of ten-
pence apiece, would have sufficed to put in good repair.
I have seen other villages having only one road by which
to despatch their commodities, and incapable of taking
concerted action when, by means of a prime expense of
;^8o, and an annual sum of ^^8 or ;^i2, they could easily
have rendered the road sound and durable. I am speaking,
however, of districts relatively wealthy, far more so at
least than the generality of the communes of France.

" We need have no hesitation in saying that of all the
wealthy and long civilised nations France is one of the
worst off as regards the possession and inexpensiveness
of objects of collective use. Gas is dearer than anywhere
else ; electricity has but hardly begun to light a few
streets of a few towns ; the state of urban transport is
barbarous ; tramways are rare, and almost unknown save
in cities of the first rank and a few only of the second,
and the tramway companies, with perhaps two or three
exceptions in the whole of France, have failed ; capitalists,
alarmed at these failures, feel no inclination to endow our
cities with networks of perfected urban communications.
The telephone is twice or thrice as dear in Paris as in
London, Berlin, Brussels, Amsterdam, or New York.
Thus, in the nineteenth century, we have a great country
profiting only in the very slightest degree by the numerous
recent developments which have been transforming urban
existence for the last fifty years. Is it that the State does

176 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

not intervene sufficiently ? No, it is because it intervenes
too much ! The municipalities, which represent the
State, use to excess their double power of restraint : the
administrative and legal restraint, which multiplies in-
' junctions or prohibitions, and often, without any restric-
tion, subjects companies to the variable judgment of the
municipal councils ; and the fiscal restraint, which is
anxious to make of every society of capitalists an in-
exhaustible milch-cow for the municipality. To these
forms of restraint must be added the narrow sentiment of
envy which regards all property of private companies as
a reflection on the public powers."

The complication of procedure, the routine, and also
the necessity which the employes experience, in order to
safeguard their responsibility, of subjecting themselves to
the most minute formalities, result in the enormous
expense which is evident in everything administered by
the State. I The reports given in the name of the Com-
mission of the Budget, by M. Cavaignac on the War
Budget, and by M. Pelletan on the Naval Budget, show
that the complexities of our administrations surpass the
imaginable. In M. Cavaignac's report we find, among a
number of analogous cases, the incredible yet veracious
tale of the chef de bataillon who, having received per-
mission to have made, at the Invalides, a pair of non-
regimental boots, found himself a debtor to the State
for the sum of 7 fr. 80, which sum he was perfectly
willing to pay. To render this payment regular there

' I may cite, as an example of the special state of mind created by
bureaucratic necessities, the case, brought to the notice of Parlia-
ment by a minister, M. Delcasse, of a long controversy which took
place in the offices of a department with the end of discovering
whether the expenditure for seventy-seven kilos of iron should figure
in the budget of the department as 3 fr. 46 or 3 fr. 47. To decide
this question the prolonged deliberation of half-a-dozen chiefs of
department was necessary, and finally the intervention of the
minister himself.

SOCIALISM AMONG THE LATIN PEOPLES 177

were necessary three letters from the Minister of War,
one from the Minister of Finances, and fifteen letters,
decisions, or reports from generals, directors, chiefs of
departments, &c., at the head of the various administra-
tive services !

In the report of the Commission on the Naval Budget
we find far greater complications. The monthly pay
of a simple lieutenant comprises a collection of sixty-
five different items, " all provided with long tails of deci-
mals." To obtain, in a seaport, a " sail-maker's palm," a
piece of leather worth a penny, it is necessary to make
out a special form, for which one must explore every
corner of the port in search of six different signatures.
When once the scrap of leather is obtained, new signa-
tures and inscriptions are necessary in other registers.
As a receipt for certain articles pieces of accountant's work
demanding fourteen days' labour are necessary. The
number of reports docketed by certain departments is
reckoned at 100,000.

There is not less complexity on board ship ; the bureau-
cratic provisions are prodigious. " We have found there,
together with thirty-three volumes of regulations, intended
to determine the details of administrative life on board, a
list of 230 different types of registers, ledgers, memoranda,
weekly and monthly reports, certificates, receipt forms,
journals, fly-leaves, &c." The unhappy employes very
quickly lose their heads in this labyrinth of ciphers.
Crushed by their terrible labour, they end by working
entirely at hazard. " Hundreds of employes are occupied
exclusively at calculating, transcribing, copying into in-
numerable registers, reproducing on countless fly-leaveS,
dividing, totalising, or despatching to the minister, figures
that have no reality, that correspond to nothing in the
region of facts, which would probably be nearer the truth
if they were one and all invented."

13

178 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

It is thus impossible to arrive at any precise informa-
tion with regard to munitions, for each category thereof
is appropriated to a whole series of bureaux, each of
which is autonomous. A few verifications, undertaken at
random by the writer of the report on the Budget, yielded
him the most extravagant figures.

For instance, while essential objects were absolutely
lacking — for example, the 23,000 spoons and forks men-
tioned in his report, which, on sale for one penny retail
in the streets of Toulon, were bought by the Administra-
tion at the rate of fivepence apiece — we find that of other
articles a stock was laid in which would last for thirty
years, and in some cases for sixty-eight years. As for the
bargains of the Administration, the figures unearthed were
truly marvellous. In the extreme East — the place of pro-
duction — it paid for rice 60 per cent, more than the
price at Toulon. The prices paid for all articles are in
general double the price that would be paid by a private
individual, simply because the Administration is unable
to pay for them before innumerable pieces of accountant's
work have been passed and filed, and is obliged to apply
to intermediaries, who make advances which are often
not reimbursed for a very long time, on account of the
frightful complication of the necessary documents. All
this terrible and unnecessary waste represents millions of
pounds as truly thrown away as though cast into the sea.
A business man who should conduct his affairs in such a
manner would not wait long for bankruptcy.

M. Pelletan had the curiosity to investigate the routine
of private industry, and to consider how to avoid these
thousands of registers and employes, and this accountant's
work which ends, by reason of the perfect impossibility
of fathoming it, in the most serious disorder. Nothing
could be more interesting than this comparison, which
contrasts State Socialism as dreamed of by the

SOCIALISM AMONG THE LATIN PEOPLES 179

Collectivists with private initiative as understood by
the EngHsh and Americans. He expresses himself as
follows : —

" In order to obtain a point of comparison, we inquired
into the procedure of a large private industrial concern
which is connected with one of our arsenals, and, like
the latter, is devoted to ship-building. We shall form
some idea of the importance of this establishment if we
consider that there are on the slips, at the present
moment, one of our large cruisers of the first class, two
Brazilian armoured vessels, a twenty-three knot cruiser, a
packet-boat, and five sailing vessels ; in short, a flotilla of
68,000 tons French. We must agree that for such an
establishment magazines of a certain importance are
necessary.

" One large book suffices for the accounts of each of
these magazines. Over the place where each sort of
article is stored is a ticket indicating the nature of the
object, the corresponding folio of the large book, and
above, in three columns, the entered, removed, and re-
maining stock. Thus a glance of the eye will discover
the state of the stock of the article in question. If a fore-
man wishes to draw from the stock he presents a signed
and dated ticket, indicating the nature of the article
applied for, and the number thereof. The storekeeper
■ writes on the back the name, weight, price per article, and
and the total price. The tickets are transcribed into a
ledger, and then into the great book. Nothing could be
simpler, nor, apparently, more complete."

It is interesting to compare the cost of production
in the case of private firms, who are obliged to make
money, with that in the case of the State, which is not so
obliged. The comparison has been made long ago ;
articles that the State makes for itself cost it, in general,
25 to 50 per cent, more than the same articles made by

i8o THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

private firms. In the case of armoured vessels, the total
cost of which is about ^£800,000, the difference of the
costs of production in England and France is about
25 per cent., according to a report drawn up by M. de
Kerjegu.i

This excessive cost of all that is manufactured by the
State is the result of many factors. It is sufficient to
investigate the fact, without searching into all the causes.
We shall limit ourselves to observing that some of these
causes reside not merely in the complication of regula-
tions and formalities, but in an essential psychological
factor ; the indifference which one naturally brings to all
affairs in which there is no question of personal interest.
It is for this important reason that we so often see the
failure of industrial enterprises which are managed by

' The comparison between the cost of production by private con-
cerns and by the State establishments is extremely difficult, for the
reason that those interested take good care to forget to include, in the
cost of production,. such considerable expenses as rents, salaries, &c.,
which are charged to other budgets. Thus it has been proved to the
Chamber of Deputies, by a special inquiry made by the Budget
Commission, that the ImprimerU Nationale, which pretended to
make a profit, actually presents an annual deficit of £25,600. This
deficit, however, is not brought about by the cheapness of its
publications.

The inquiry proved that the costs of production of the publica-
tions of this establishment, which is supported by the State, which
gives it, indirectly, a subsidy of ;£3S,ooo a year, are from 25 to 30
per cent, in excess of the cost of production by private industry.
The difference is sometimes greater. Among the examples given
before the Chamber we may mention that of a special work which
the Minister of the Navy wished to publish. The Intprimerie
Nationale, a subsidised establishment, demanded ;^2,400. A private
pubhsher, not subsidised, demanded ;£8oo. It is true that in the
Imprimerie Nationale — which we may regard as a type of the estab-
lishments of the future collectivist society — everything passes with
the most punctilious regularity. One of the commission, M. Her-
vieu, says : " It is necessary to obtain a piece of paper authorising
one to enter, another authorising one to make the desired purchase,
another authorising one to carry away what one has bought, and
finally another a,uthorising one to leave the establishment."

SOCIALISM AMONG THE LATIN PEOPLES i8i

intermediaries, and not by any one personally inte-
rested.i

From these different conditions there necessarily
ensue very dissimilar methods of administration. I have
recently met with an example, which I here reproduce, as
being highly typical and because it clearly illustrates my
idea.

A foreign firm had established in France, at its own
expense, a tramway line uniting two great industrial
centres, which it administered itself. The enterprise
succeeded admirably. The annual receipts reached
;£44,ooo, and the working expenses did not exceed 47 per
cent. The local authorities having observed to the com-
pany that it was annoying to see a foreigner at its head,
the company consented to replace him by a French
engineer. The experiment was highly instructive. The
engineer began first of all by reorganising the offices and
adorning them with numerous officials — sub-director,
accountant-in-chief, advocate-in-chief, cashier, &c. ; he
then naturally elaborated a long and very complex scheme
of regulations, in which all the ingenuity of his Latin
mind unfolded itself.

The results were not slow to appear. In less than a
year the working expenses had almost doubled. They
reached, in fact, the sum of 82 per cent., and the company
found ruin staring it in the face.

' A large Belgian manufacturer, who has business relations with
many countries, and whom for that reason I consulted, writes to me
on this subject as follows : —

" An evident proof of your theory — that enterprises superintended
by intermediaries are unsuccessful — may be found in the numerous
list of businesses quoted on the Bourse, which, after yielding excel-
lent returns, have dwindled almost to nothing as soon as they have
been transformed into anonymous companies.

" We have business concerns here which, when they belonged to
a handful of persons directly interested, gave dividends of 12 to 15
per cent. ; they have been turned into anonymous companies, and
the dividends have fallen to an average of 3 per cent. ; some np
longer yield any dividend whatever,"

r82 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

It took a heroic resolve. The director went to the
authorities, placed the results before their eyes, and then
offered to allow the engineer to retain his title and emolu-
ments, on the express condition that he should never,
under any pretext, set foot in the offices. The proposi-
tion was accepted, the old order of things re-established,
and the expenses of working quickly fell to their normal
figure of 47 per cent. This experiment in Latin adminis-
tration cost the company nearly ;£20,ooo.

Applied to the Colonies our system of administration
has engendered the most disastrous results. It has ended
in the gradual ruin of all our possessions. While the
English Colonies cost the exchequer next to nothing, we
spend ^3,200,000 a year in support of ours. In exchange
for these ;£3, 200,000 we do business with them to the
extent of about ;^3,6oo,ooo, which hardly yields ;^6oo,ooo
profit. We have then ;^6oo,ooo of receipts in exchange
for ;^3, 200,000 expenditure, which leaves an annual deficit
of ;^2,6oo,ooo. This deficit is far more than a mere loss,
for this sum of -^2,600,000 really serves to develop the
commerce of our competitors, from whom above all our
colonies draw their imports, our compatriots being in-
capable of producing them at the same prices. The
exports to our colonies from foreign countries exceed the
French exports by ;^i, 840,000, which could hardly be
otherwise in respect of the administrative hindrances
with which we embarrass our commerce in our colonies.
In order to administer the two million inhabitants of
Cochin China we employ more officials than the English
to administer 250 millions of Hindoos. A journal stated
recently that in the times of the kings of Dahomey our
traders preferred to establish themselves on their soil
rather than submit to the amazing administrative com-
plications which they had to encounter in our colony.
The severest tyrant is far less severe than the anony-

SOCIALISM AMONG THE LATIN PEOPLES 183

mous bureaucratic tyranny to which, in default of know-
ing how to conduct ourselves, we are absolutely forced to
submit.

Naturally, the Latin administrative methods necessitate
an enormous budget ; from ^^72,000,000 in 1869 it has
gradually increased to ^^140,000,000, a sura which must
be increased to ;^20o,ooo,ooo if we add the communal
budgets to that of the State. Such a budget can exist
only by crushing taxation." The State, obedient to the
general state of mind, whicTi opposes all undertakings
due to private enterprise, hampers industry by sometimes
extravagant taxes. The Omnibus Company in its last
report, published in 1898, stated that for a dividend of 65
francs per share paid to each shareholder it paid to the
State or the city 149 francs in taxes, or a duty of more
than 200 per cent. In the case of the Compagnie generate
des voitiires the State and the City levied 2 francs 44 cen-
times of the daily receipts of each vehicle, so that the
shareholders received only 11 centimes. And so forth.
All these enterprises are consequently approaching ruin,
and they also are destined, sooner or later, inevitably to
pass into the hands of the State.

The preceding figures allow us to foresee what State
Socialism will bring us to when its evolution shall be
complete ; the speedy and absolute ruin of every
industry of the countries in which it shall triumph.

It is almost superfluous to add that the effects of
centralisation and absorption by the State which we per-
peive in France are equally perceptible in the other Latin
countries, and in a far greater degree. Things have
arrived at such a crisis in Italy that on February 21,

' For products of general use, such as sugar, the duty is double
the value of the product ; the duty on alcohol is five times the value
of the product. Salt, tobacco, and petroleum are taxed in a similar
manner. The most essential products, such as bread and meat, are
often doubled in price by taxation.

i84 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

1894, the Government laid a Bill before Parliament by
means of which the King should be invested, for one
year, with dictatorial powers, in order to attempt the
reorganisation of the administrations of the State. It is
a matter for regret that the Bill did not pass ; for its
application would clearly have demonstrated the vanity
of all attempts at the reform of institutions when they
are the consequences of a racial state of mind.

We may gain some idea of the development of State
Socialism in Italy, and of the restraint it produces, from
the following extracts from an article by the Italian
deputy Bonasi, published in the Political and Parliamen-
tary Review for October, 1895.

" The administrative officials in the provinces are not
only allowed no initiative ; they are not even allowed
the modest latitude of interpretation and application
which is nevertheless inseparable from the exercise of an
administrative function. Outside of the attributes which
are expressly conferred on them by laws, regulations,
circulars, and ministerial instructions, they dare not
budge an ;inch without previous authorisation, and the
final approbation of the minister on whom they are
dependent. . . . The prefects, the commissioners of
finance, the presidents of the courts, the rectors of
universities, are unable to authorise the smallest ex-
penditure or the least important or most urgent repair,
unless their decision has received the benediction of the
ministerial placet. , . .

" If a commune, or a benevolent society, wish to
acquire real estate, though it be a matter only of a square
yard of earth, or the acceptance of a legacy made in
its favour, even of a few shillings, there must be a
deliberation of the communal council, or of the com-
mittee of the society ; and more, there is necessary
in each case the vote of the administrative provincial

SOCIALISM AMONG THE LATIN PEOPLES 185

commission ; a request made to the King for the
supreme authorisation ; a report from the prefect accom-
panying the application to the minister, with a summing-
up and particulars ; a report from the minister to the
Council of State ; an advice from the Council, and finally
a royal decree, and its registration in the Court of
Accounts."

The inevitable consequences of this state of things
have been an extremely rapid increase of the number
of Italian functionaries, and consequently of the Budget.

Identical facts are to be observed in all the Latin
nations, and are clearly the result of the mental con-
stitution of their race. The proof is yet more authentic
where we oppose these facts to what I have said in
another chapter of the results of private initiative in
the Anglo-Saxon race.

It is especially important to keep in mind the proof
that it is entirely to ourselves, and not to the Government,
that we owe the gradual extension of the role of the
State and its consequences. Let the government be
what we will — republic, dictatorship, commune, or
monarchy ; let it have ,at its head Heliogabalus, Louis
Quatorze, Robespierre, or a victorious general — the part
played by the State among the Latin peoples cannot
change. It is the consequence of a racial necessity. The
State, in reality, is ourselves, and we can blame none
but ourselves for its organisation. By reason of this
mental characteristic, which Caesar in his days perceived
and pointed out, we always hold the Government respon-
sible for our own faults, and we are still persuaded
that by changing our institutions or our rulers everything
will be transformed. No amount of reasoning can cure
us of the error. We can, however, foresee it, in con-
sidering that when the hazards of politics have placed
at the heads of departments such deputies as have the

i86 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

most searchingly criticised the services they find them
selves called to direct, there has never been an example
of their being able to modify, however slightly, that
which they considered, with reason, to be an intolerable
abuse. These abuses are vices of race, and therefore
incurable. We have only to cite the example of the
Minister of the Navy to more than justify these remarks.

3. The Collectivist State.

We have just been considering the progress of State
Socialism and its consequences. It remains to me to
show how little divides us from complete Collectivism,
as dreamed of by the high priests of the doctrine.

The dangers of Collectivism have not escaped the eyes
of such statesmen as have been endowed with a certain
perspicacity ; but they do not appear to have seen very
clearly that we have long ago entered into the Collectivist
phase. Ensuing are the remarks on this subject of one of
the most distinguished of them, M. Bourdeau, sometime
president of the Chamber of Deputies : —

"The danger to be feared is not that Collectivism is
triumphing, establishing itself, modelling society to its
liking. The danger is that it continues to insinuate
itself into the popular mind, and into our institutions ;
to throw scorn on capital and its use, and on the institu-
tions derived from it (banks and so forth) ; on private
initiative, which is incessantly vilified, to the profit of
State monopolies ; on thrift, on personal property, on
inheritance, on salaries proportioned to the merits and
utility of the returns offered ; on the means which to-day
serve to elevate the lowest, or at least their descendants,
to the highest positions ; on the support given to society
by the millions of initative efforts excited by personal
interest.

SOCIALISM AMONG THE LATIN PEOPLES 187

"The result of all this is enormously to increase the
rSle of the State ; to make it responsible for railroads,
mines, and banks, and perhaps for navigation, assurance,
and stores ; to crush large or medium fortunes and
inheritances by duties, together with all that stimulates
man to invention, or to adventurous and long-sustained
enterprises ; all that makes him a creature of foresight,
considerate of future generations ; all that makes him
a worker for posterity ; to disgust the worker with
difficult tasks, with economy, with the hope of success ;
in short, to reduce the individual to mediocrity of desires,
ambitions, energy, and talent, under the guardianship
of an all-absorbing State ; to replace, more and more,
the man animated by personal interest, by a quasi-
official."

The conclusions of this statesman are patent to every
mind a little familiar with the economic and psychologic
necessities which rule a people. He has clearly per-
ceived that the latent triumph of Socialism is still more
assured and still more dangerous than its nominal
triumph.

The society of the future, dreamed of by the Collec-
tivists, has for some time been gradually realising itself
among the Latin nations. State Socialism is, in fact,
as I have shown, the necessary conclusion of the past
of these nations, the final step towards the decadence
which no civilisation has as yet been able to avoid. For
centuries subjected systematically to hierarchies, brought
to a dead level by a university education and a system
of examinations which run all into one mould ; greedy
of equality, but little eager for liberty ; accustomed to
every kind of administrative tyranny, military, religious,
or moral ; having lost all initiative, all power of will ;
gradually habituated to have recourse in all things to
the State ; — they are doomed by the fatality of their race

i88 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

to suffer the State Socialism which the Collectivists are
preaching to-day. I have already said that they have
actually been subjected to it for a considerable time.
To convince himself, the reader has only to consider
what it is that the Collectivists are proposing, and therein
to perceive the simple development of the already exis-
tent state of things. These Collectivists truly believe
themselves to be innovators, but their doctrine is only
precipitating a natural phase of evolution whose pre-
paration and advent is none of their work. A brief
examination of their fundamental propositions will
readily prove this.

One of the principal ends of Collectivism is the State
monopoly of all industries and enterprises. Now all
that in England^ and especially in America, is founded
and fostered by private initiative, is, to-day, among the
Latin peoples, more or less in the hands of the Govern-
ment. And the Government is for ever taking over fresh
industries — telephones and matches to-day— alcohol,
mines, and means of transport to-morrow. When this
absorption is complete an important fraction of the
Collectivist dream will be realised.

The Collectivists wish to place the public wealth in the
hands of the State by various means ; notably by the
progressive increase of the death duties. With us these
death duties are increasing every day ; a new Bill has
just brought them up to 15 per cent. A few successive
increases will realise the Collectivist ideal.

The Collectivist State will give every citizen an iden-
tical, gratuitous, and obligatory education. Our Univer-
sity, with its terrible bed of Procrustes, has realised
this ideal long ago.

' The Collectivist State will control everything by means
of an immense army of functionaries who will regulate
the least acts of the citizen's life. There are already

SOCIALISM AMONG THE LATIN PEOPLES 189

great battalions of these functionaries ; they are to-day
the true masters in the State. Their number is always
on the increase, by the sole fact that the laws and
regulations which are progressively limiting the initiative
and liberty of the citizen are on the increase. Already,
under various pretexts, they supervise the work of manu-
factories, and of the smallest private undertakings. They
have only to increase their number and their attributes
a little, and the Collectivist dream will be realised on
this point also.

While it hopes to arrive at the absorption of private
fortunes to the profit of the State by increasing the death
duties. Collectivism is also persecuting capital in every
imaginable manner. The State has led the way in this
matter. Every day all private undertakings find them-
selves crushed by heavier and heavier duties, which are
more and more reducing their returns and their chances
of prosperity. There are, as I have already shown, certain
industries, such as the Omnibus Company in Paris, which
for 65 francs of dividend to the shareholder pay 149 francs
in various taxes. Other sources of revenue are being
extinguished, one after another, by increasing duties.
We are beginning to think of attacking rent. In Italy,
where this stage has long been reached, the duty on rent
has gradually been raised to 20 per cent. A few succes-
sive increases of the duty will suffice to arrive at the
complete absorption of revenue, and consequently of
capital, for the profit of the State.

Finally, according to the CoUectivists, the proletariat
should deprive the present directing classes of their
political rights. This has not been effected as yet, but
we are nearing it rapidly. The popular classes are the
masters of society by virtue of the universal suffrage, and
they are beginning to send an increasing number of
Socialists to Parliament. When the majority is a Socialist

190 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

majority the list of demands will be completely granted.
Every fantasy will be possible ; and finally, to bring them
to an end, will definitely open that period of Caesars, and
then of invasions, which has always marked the final hour
of decadence of nations already too aged.

CHAPTER VII

THE PRESENT STATE OF THE LATIN PEOPLES

I. Weaknesses of the Latin nations : — The result of the conceptions already
treated of — The dangers with which the development of Socialism
threatens them — The Latin nations can no longer make experiments
or venture on revolutions save under penalty of disappearing — Modern
necessities. 2. The Latin Republics of America. Spain and Portugal : —
Present condition of the Spanish- American republics — They represent
the lowest level of Latin civilisation— Their destiny — Spain and
Portugal — Their state of decadence — Colonial government of the
Spaniards — Why they have lost their colonies — The Spanish-American
war considered from a psychological point of view — Influence of the
character of the two opposing races — Incidents of the war. 3. Italy
and France : — Present condition of Italy — Disorganised state of her
administration, army, and finances — The revolutions which threaten
her — Near triumph of Socialism — Why the triumph of Socialism
threatens Italy far more than France — General lowering of morality
among the Latin nations — Present condition of France — Symptoms
of fatigue and indifference. 4. The results of the adoption of the Latin
concepts by peoples of different race : — The modern Greeks, since the
time of the Independence, have adopted the conceptions of the Latin
nations en bloc, and notably the Latin conception of education — Results
produced in fifty years — Complete disorganisation of finances, ad-
ministration, and army-^Progress of Socialism — The Grseco-Turkish
war — European illusions with regard to Greece.- 5. The future
which threatens the Latin nations : — The present phase of the evolution
of the world will not allow the feeble nations to continue their
existence — Predictions of Lord Salisbury — The grave dangers of
Socialist experiments for the Latin nations.

I, Weaknesses of the Latin Nations.

WE have already seen the consequences produced
among the Latin nations by the gradual extension
of their conception of the State : that is to say, of a
central power substituting itself for the initiative of the
citizen and acting for him. It is of no significance

192 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

whether this power be a collectivity or a monarchy ; the
fundamental conception remains the same under these
meaningless external forms.

From a practical point of view, Socialism represents
merely the extension of the same conception. What may
still remain of initiative and strength of will in the citizen
mind will very soon be entirely broken by the regulation
of labour, and the perpetual interference of functionaries
in all the acts of life.

A large number of persons who dislike conflict seem
to be more and more disposed to allow Socialism to
develop. Having no second sight by which to pass the
horizon that surrounds them, they have no idea of what
is beyond. But that which lies beyond is menacing and
terrible. If they wish their existence to continue, the
Latin nations must risk no more experiments, no more
revolutions. New economic conditions are in process of
overturning the conditions of national life, and there will
very soon be no place for the weaker nations. Now the
weakness of the greater number of the Latin nations will
very soon have reached that extreme limit below which
no recovery is possible. They will not prevent things
from being what they are by intoxicating themselves with
brilliant phrases, abandoning themselves to futile discus-
sions, or boasting of the exploits of their grandfathers.
The age of chivalry, of heroic and superb sentiments, of
ingenious dialectic, has long passed away. We are more
and more hedged about with implacable realities, and the
subtlest arguments, the most sonorous dithyrambics on
right and justice, have as much effect on these realities as
had the rods of Xerxes on the sea that he had beaten as a
punishment for having destroyed his vessels.

To make my argument clearer I shall attempt to present
in a general view the present condition of the Latin
nations, and some of its consequences.

PRESENT STATE OF THE LATIN PEOPLES 193

2. The Latin Republics of America. Spain and
Portugal.

Let us first of all consider the nations at the lowest
level of the scale of Latin civilisation : the twenty-two
Latin republics of America. They have often afforded
me an example to demonstrate the small influence of
institutions on national life, and it would be useless to
return to the consideration of their condition in any
detail. All, without a single exception, have reached
that state in which decadence manifests itself by the
completest anarchy, and in which a people can only gain
by being conquered by a nation strong enough to rule it.
Peopled by exhausted races, without energy, without
initiative, without morality, without strength of will, the
twenty-two Latin republics of America, although situated
in the richest countries of .the earth, are incapable of
making use of their immense resources. They live on
European loans, which are divided amongst bands of
political pirates, who are associated with other pirates of
European finance, who make it their business to exploit
the ignorance of the public, and are doubly guilty in that
they are too well informed to believe that their loans will
ever be repaid. Pillage is general in these unhappy
republics, and, as every one wishes to take part in it, civil
wars are a permanent institution, and the presidents are
systematically assassinated in order to allow a new party
to arrive in power and enrich itself in turn. This state of
things will doubtless continue until the day when some
talented adventurer shall place himself at the head of a
few thousand well-disciplined men, undertake the easy
conquest of these unhappy countries, and subject them
to an iron rule, the only rule of which nations deprived
of virility and morality, and incapable of governing them-
selves, are worthy.

14

194 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

All these degenerate countries would long ago have
returned to a state of pure barbarism had there not been
established in the capitals a few foreigners — English and
Germans — attracted by the natural riches of the soil. The
only one of these republics which to some extent main-
tains itself, the Argentine Republic, has escaped the
general ruin merely because it has been gradually in-
vaded by the English.

Before becoming republics all these provinces were
under the rule of Spain. They succeeded, by revolution,
in shaking off the gloomy government of her monks and
rapacious governors, but it was too late. The bias was
set, the mind was formed, and recovery was impossible ;
besides which the monks had for a long period been
charged with the duty of suppressing all persons mani-
festing any trace of intelligence and independence.

From the Latin republics of America let us pass to the
Latin monarchies of Europe. Their condition is certainly
less melancholy, but very far from brilliant.

We know what is the present condition of Spain and
Portugal ; the least observant traveller can ascertain it by
a short stay in those countries. The few industries that
prosper are in the hands of strangers, or have been
created by strangers. These countries, of old so power-
ful, are to-day as incapable of governing themselves as of
governing their colonies, which they are losing one by
one. To Spain remained Cuba and the Philippines ; she
subjected them to such rapacious exploitation, to ad-
ministrators so corrupt and ferocious, as to provoke an
exasperated rising on the part of the natives, and the
intervention of strangers.

Dr. Pinto de Guimaraes, in a book published under the
title The Spanish Terror in the Philippines, has recently
furnished details which show what the Spanish domina-

PRESENT STATE OF THE LATIN PEOPLES 195

tion was in the Colonies, and how legitimate was the
horror it inspired. I cite the following lines from this
book ; —

" One thing that appears at the first glance is that the
intervention of the United States was no less necessary
in the Pacific than in the Atlantic. The Spanish rule
weighed on the Philippines as heavily as on Cuba, and if
the cruelties committed there have remained more secret
it is not that the Filipinos are more long-suffering than
the Cubans ; it is because of their absolute isolation, far
from the civilised world, and because of the pains taken
by the local governors to stifle all complaints and intercept
all demands. But the truth, which is stronger than all
despotisms, end by making itself heard ; and the Filipinos,
despite the Spanish gag, have succeeded in crying so loud
that the world has heard them.

"It is impossible to imagine what vexations, what
shifty formalities, what ruinous inventions can emanate
from the brain of a Spanish functionary. All these gentry
have but one object : to make, during their three or six
years in the Philippines, the largest possible fortune, and
to return home in order to escape the concert of the
maledictions of the inhabitants. . . . Every governor
whose future is not largely assured after two years of
office is universally regarded as an imbecile. The
celebrated General Weyler was enabled to deposit, as much
in the London as in the Parisian banks, a sum which
his own compatriots reckoned to be no less than ;^5oo,ooo
or ;^6oo,ooo. How did he conduct himself in order to
save ;^6oo,ooo in three years, with an annual pay of
;£8,ooo ?

" And yet one cannot refrain from pondering over the
marvellous resources of these islands, and of the splendid
results which they would assuredly have afforded any other
power than Spain. Robbed, oppressed, ruined, tortured,

190 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

the Philippines nevertheless manage to exist. The cha-
racter of the functionaries and the fiscal jugglers of the
country keep away all those who rnight contribute to
the development of its prosperity^"

The clergy, together with the officials, constitute one of
the most pernicious plagues of the Philippines. They
number six thousand, and their greed ^ is equalled only
by their ferocity. They have rehabilitated all the tortures
of the Inquisition.

Dr. de Guimaraes gives .details of the cruelty exercised
toward the natives by the Spaniards which make one
shiver. - There is notably the story of the hundred
prisoners who were confined in a dungeon called the
" Death Hole," half full of putrid water, and infested with
rats and venomous serpents of all kinds ; altogether
worthy of the imagination of a romancer. " They passed
a terrible night ; they were heard howling in agony and
praying that some one would ' finish ' them. Next day
all were dead."

" In the presence of such facts," concludes Dr.
Guimaraes, " no one will be surprised by the joy felt
by the insurgents at the American successes. Spain has
for centuries, in these unhappy isles, displayed a spectacle
of ferocity that the heroism of her defence cannot atone
for." I am of the same opinion.

Naturally the Spanish rule in Cuba has been the same
as in the Philippines, and there too the people have finally
revolted. The insurgents formed only a few ill-equipped
bands whose number never exceeded 10,000 men. Against
them Spain sent 150,000 men, commanded by numerous
generals, and spent in four years to conquer them nearly

' According to the figures given by Senor Montero of Vidal, the
most humble cures yield their incumbents ;£400 a year, and some
yield £i,cx)o to ;£3,ooo. These sums are paid by the natives, whose
poverty is nevertheless extreme.

PRESENT STATE OF THE LATIN PEOPLES 197

;^8o,ooo,ooo. But all these generals, with their blasting
proclamations, could not, after years of conflict, and
despite their implacable cruelties, succeed in triumphing
over these ill-armed bands of insurgents. The cruelties
of the Spaniards and the massacres of inoffensive popula-
tions in which they indulged on an extensive scale, gave
the United States an excellent reason for intervention.
All those who have a care for humanity have loudly
acclaimed their success.

The Spanish-American war is full of instruction for
him who studies it from a psychological point of view.
Never has the part played in the life of the nations by
character, and therefore by race, been more clearly
manifested. The world had never yet seen such a
spectacle as this of an entire fleet, heavily armoured,
annihilated in a few minutes without succeeding in doing
the slightest harm to the enemy. In two engagements
twenty Spanish vessels were destroyed without even
having planned a defence. To die like a stoic is a poor
excuse for incapacity, and the world has never seen the
results of indecision, lack of foresight, carelessness, and
want of coolness better than at Manila and in Cuba. At
Manila, where the American fleet entered by night, the
Spaniards had forgotten to light the beacons which should
have signalled its presence, and had also forgotten to
defend the channel by means of mines. At Santiago de
Cuba they neglected to send for reinforcements, which
were not lacking in the island, and would have made the
defence an easy matter ; at Porto Rico there were not
even any defenders. When the fleet annihilated itself by
voluntarily steaming on to the rocks without one of its
projectiles having reached the enemy it afforded a
lamentable spectacle. By throwing itself at the enemy
instead of running away it might assuredly have done
some damage, and would at least have saved its honour.

198 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

"One might say," very justly writes M. H. Depasse on
this subject, " that the two adversaries belong to different
civilisations, or rather to different periods of history ; the
One master of its means and of itself through education,
the other obeying only the impulsive movements of
nature." It would be impossible better to denote, in a
few lines, one of the principal differences between the
Anglo-Saxon and Latin education.^

The natives will gain by this war in that they will pass
under an infinitely better rule. Spain herself will not
lose over-much by it, since her colonies brought nothing
to the State, and since her defeat will serve her as a
pretext to imitate Portugal and the Spanish-American
republics by suppressing the payment of the interest on
her National Debt, and on the stock she has disposed of
abroad. By one of those fantastic chances so frequent in
modern times, it will really be France who will pay the
expenses of this war, since she will almost certainly lose
the ;^i 20,000,000 of Spanish bonds which she holds.
Capitalists will therefore discover that a knowledge of the
psychology of nations is a science which possesses a
highly practical value. I doubt if a single capitalist
knowing a little of the psychology of the Spaniards would
ever have risked the slightest sum either in Spain or in
any dependency of Spain.

' The following extract from an interview with Marshal Campos,
published in all the journals, very well sums up the impression pro-
duced on. the world at large by the incredible successes of the army
improvised by the United States against a trai«ed and very numerous
army, for the Spaniards had 150,000 men in Cuba ; far more than the
Americans had : " Never could even the greatest of pessimists have
imagined that our misfortunes would have been so numerous. The
disaster at Cavite, the destruction of Cervera's squadron, the fall of
Santiago, the rapid and unopposed occupation of Porto Rico — no one
would ever have believed these possible, even in exaggerating the
power of the States and the inferiority of Spain."

PRESENT STATE OF THE LATIN PEOPLES 199

3. France and Italy.

Italy, although she has not fallen as low as Spain, is
not in a much better condition, and her disorder is
betrayed by her finances. She is the victim not only of
the Latin conceptions which have shaped her soul, but
also of that fatal idea of unity which has sprung up in the
minds of her pohticians. In uniting, under a central
power, populations as profoundly dissimilar as the
Piedmontese, the Lombards, the Sicilians, &c., Italy has
undertaken the most ruinous and disastrous of experi-
ments. In thirty years she has passed from a very
enviable condition to the completest disorganisation of
her politics, administration, finances, and military ser-
vices.

Her finances are not in such a miserable state as those
of Spain, but she is already forced to have recourse to a
paper currency, and has established a duty on rent which
has gradually, by increase after increase, mounted to
20 per cent., and which in rising further will lead her
to a failure like that of Portugal. At a distance she gives
the illusion of a great people, but her power is only a
thin show, incapable of resisting the least of shocks.
Despite the millions spent in creating an army permitting
her to figure among the great Powers, Italy has for the
first time in the world afforded the melancholy spectacle
of an army of 20,000 Europeans annihilated in set battle
by savage hordes, and of a great civilised country being
obliged to pay an indemnity to a petty African king,

' In their manner of comprehending the role of the State the
Italians surpass even the French in pushing the Latin concept to an
extreme. Nowhere so much as in Italy is developed the absolute
faith in the omnipotence of the State, the necessity of its fostering
care in all affairs, and notably in commerce and industry, and as
their final consequences the development of officialism and the
incapacity of the citizen to manage his own business himself without
the constant assistance of the Government.

200 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

whose capital had been so easily taken a few years before
by a small force of Englishmen. She drags herself along
at the apron-strings of Germany, and is obliged to submit
without a murmur to the disdain which the German
papers incessantly pour on her. The wastefulness and
carelessness to be observed in Italy are incredible. She
erects useless monuments, such as that of Victor
Emmanuel, which will cost more than -£1,600,000, while
at the same time, in Sicily, she has provinces plunged
into the blackest misery, whose villages are abandoned
by their inhabitants and invaded by brambles.' We may
judge of the quality of her administration by the banking
scandal, or by the lamentable process of Palermo, in
which it was proved that all the Government agents, from
the director to the least of the employes, had for years
lived by the most brazen pillage of the finances of their
province. In the face of the proofs of disorganisation
and demoralisation which Italy daily presents, and which
show her to be on the eve of revolution, one can under-
stand the scathing judgment which one of the most
remarkable of Italian scientists, Signer Lombroso, has
pronounced, in a recent work, on his own country ; a
judgment which we should like to believe too severe.

"We must be ten times blind not to see that with all
our love of boasting, we in Italy form the last but one, if
not the last, of the European nations ; the last in morality,
the last in education, the last in agricultural and industrial
activity, the last in integrity of justice, and, above all, the

' And yet the needs of the Itahan peasantry are very small. The
wages of those who work by the day rarely exceed fivepence a day.
As for the working men, they reckon themselves extremely well oflE
if their wages are as much as nine or ten shillings a week. If the
middle and upper classes possessed a tithe of the endurance and
energy of the lower classes Italy would rank among the most pros-
perous of the nations, instead of finding herself almost in the last
rank of the civilised nations.

PRESENT STATE OF THE LATIN PEOPLES 201

last in respect of the relative comfort of the lower
classes." '

Italy would appear to be destined to inevitable revo-
lutions, and very soon to see accomplished that fatal
cycle of which I have already often spoken : Socialism,
Caesarism, and dissolution.

M. A. Suissy has very well shown ;in the following
lines how weary is Italy already of her parliamentary
rSgime, which is yet the only one that can guarantee her
liberties.

" The Italian people are losing confidence in the virtue
of the parliamentary regime. The debates and intrigues
to which their representatives are given up appear to
them to be more often than not opposed to the general
interests of the country. They have some intuition of
the dangers which are gathering, and they have no hope
of finding in the parliamentary system, as it is practised,
any weapon of defence against them.

"In Rome we are beginning to see all the gravity of
lassitude on the one side and exasperation on the other.
The poor classes, who suffer the most from the crisis, are
goaded to revolution. The middle and commercial
classes, on the contrary, cry out for a saviour who shall
deliver them from the trouble of defending themselves.
The state of siege in Milan, Florence, and- Naples offers
no objection to their minds. The love of liberty is dying
in the hearts of those who pretend to belong to the
directing classes."

A factor which has created a problem for Italy, of which
the solution is not apparent, is the fact that her desire to
imitate the wealthy nations has led her into creating for
herself a host of needs in the matters of comfort and
luxury which her poverty does not allow her to satisfy.

"The majority of Italians," writes Signor Gughelmo

' The A narchisis.

202 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

Ferrero, " are on the threshold of a superior civilisation ;
they have developed new wants, and aspire to embellish
their lives with a certain degree of comfort and culture,
but their means are insufficient. . , . Italy cannot regard
fine and beautiful things without wishing to enjoy them.
What disillusions, what rage, what vexation, must enter
into the daily existence of the majority of men living
under such conditions ! . . . Reckon what a prodigious
sum of irritability is gathering itself up in the whole of
society, and you will have little trouble in comprehending
the terrible instabihty of its equilibrium."

It is among individuals whose needs are very great, and
who have neither the capacity nor the energy to acquire
the means to satisfy them, that Socialism most easily
develops. It offers itself as a remedy for all evils, and
for this reason- Italy would seem fatally destined to suffer
the most dangerous Socialistic experiments.

This craving for luxury, enjoyment, and splendour con-
stitutes one of the greatest differences between Italy and
Spain. In all that concerns the external aspect of civili-
sation, Spain is evidently very far below Italy, but the
middle and lower strata of the population have very little
to complain of, for their requirements have not multiplied,
and so continue to be easily satisfied. As the means of
communication, and railways in especial, are little deve-
loped in Spain, whole provinces are still isolated from the
world, and have been able to retain their ancient manner
of existence. Life has remained incredibly easy there ;
for as their needs are very small, and luxury is unknown
to them, the produce grown on the spot is sufficient for
the people. If we leave out of account large towns and
external luxury — which are, it is true, the only things we
know, because they are the only ones that make them-
selves heard — Spain possesses a degree of civilisation
which is doubtless little refined, but entirely suited to her

PRESENT STATE OF THE LATIN PEOPLES 203

mental evolution and its requirements. Socialism, there-
fore, cannot seriously threaten her.

Among the greater number of the Latin peoples few
but the so-called directing classes are becoming more eager
for the expensive refinements of civilisation. This aspi-
ration is quite allowable when one is confident of the
intelligence and energy necessary to procure these refine-
ments. It is far less allowable when the development of
energy and intelligence are very inferior to the develop-
ment of requirements. When people wish to make a
fortune at any price, and their capacities do not permit
them to satisfy their desire, they have little regard for the
means they employ ; honesty becomes elastic, and
demoralisation very soon becomes general ; as it has,
indeed, in the case of most of the Latin nations. In them,
indeed, we increasingly perceive the disquieting fact that
the morality of the directing classes is often far below
that of the populace. This is one of the most dangerous
symptoms of the decadence that could appear, for if it is
through the upper classes that civilisations advance, it is
also through them that they perish.

This term " morality " is so vague, and embraces such
dissimilar things, that its use necessarily results in serious
confusion. I employ it here in the sense of simple
honesty, the habit of respecting engagements, and the
sentiment of duty, that is to say, in the sense in which
an English author whom I have already quoted employs
it, in the passage in which he shows that it is owing to
these qualities, so modest in appearance, but in reality so
important, that the English have so rapidly revolutionised
the credit of Egypt and rendered the finances of their
colonies so prosperous.

We must not go to criminal statistics, which register
only extreme cases, to determine the degree of morality
of a nation. It is indispensable to enter into details.

204 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

The financial bankruptcy of so many of the Latin peoples
is a barometrical sign which indicates nothing less than a
final state reached by successive steps. To form an
opinion which shall repose on a reliable basis, we must
enter into the intimate life of each country ; we must
study the administration of financial societies ; we
must consider commercial manners, the independence
or venality of justice, the probity of lawyers and officials,
and many other symptoms which call for direct obser-
vation, and are not to be studied in any books. These
are subjects on which a few dozen persons at most in
Europe are perfectly informed. Would you, however,
without too laborious research, gain an exact idea of the
morality of the various nations ? Merely consult a few
leading men of business — contractors, manufacturers,
engineers — who have close relations with the commerce,
administration, and legislatures of various countries. A
contractor, who builds railways, tramways, gas and electric
light works, in many countries, will tell you, if he cares
to speak on the subject, which are the countries in which
every one may be bought — ministers, magistrates, officials,
and all — which are the countries in which few people are
to be bought, and which are the countries in which abso-
lutely no one is to be bought ; those in which commerce
is honest, and those in which it is not in the least honest.
If, however varied your sources of information be, you
find them perfectly concordant, you may evidently
convince yourself of their exactitude. ^

' It would be useless to enter into the details of this inquiry,
which the relations established by my travels have permitted me to
make in a number of countries. I will limit myself to sa5dng that I
have been very happy to find that among the Latin nations, with the
exception of a few politicians, financiers, and journalists, France is
the nation in which the greatest probity exists in administration and
justice. The magistracy is often extremely narrow, and yields too
readily to political pressure, and to questions of preferment, but it
has remained honest. But the morality of our industrial and com-

PRESENT STATE OF THE LATIN PEOPLES 205

Our rapid examination of the Latin peoples is not
complete until we turn to France, whose part in the
world was of old so brilliant and preponderant. She
still holds out against decadence, but she is badly shaken
to-day. In one century she has known all a nation can
know ; the bloodiest revolutions, glory, disaster, civil
war, invasion, and but little repose. That which she
most visibly experiences to-day is a fatigue and indiffer-
ence which seemingly amount to exhaustion.

" Compared with the same class in England and
Germany," recently wrote a German pamphleteer quoted
by la France exUrieure, " the French bourgeoisie give one
the impression of a person well advanced in years. Indi-
vidual initiative is gradually decaying ; the spirit of enter-
prise appears paralysed ; the craving for repose and for
sedentary occupations is increasing ; the investments in
State funds increase; the number of functionaries in-
creases ; energy, and the sentiment of authority, justice,
and religion are diminishing ; the interest in public
affairs is diminishing ; expenditure is increasing ; imports
are increasing all along the line ; the infiltration of
foreigners is increasing."

Presently, in studying the commercial and industrial
struggles of the Western peoples, we shall see to what
degree these assertions are unhappily justified.

4. The Results of the Adoption of the Latin
Concepts by Peoples of Different Race,

Examples of peoples in an inferior state of civilisation
adopting suddenly and in entirety the institutions of other

mercial classes is sometimes dubious enough. Yet there are, on the
contrary, countries in which the venality of the magistracy and the
administration, and the lack of commercial and financial probity
have reached the degree in which such vices no longer even seek to
dissimilate themselves under appearances.

2o6 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

peoples are rare in. modern times. I can cite no such
examples except those of Greece and Japan. Greece
presents the interesting phenomenon of a nation that
has adopted the Latin concepts en bloc, and notably that
of education. The results produced are extremely
striking, and it is all the more important that they should
be given here inasmuch as they have not yet attracted the
notice of any writer.

The modern Greeks, as we know, have no relationship
to the Latins, nor for that matter with the ancient Greeks.
Modern anthropology has shown that they are brachy-
cephalous Slavs, while the ancient Greeks were
dolichocephalous, which fact is sufficient to establish an
absolutely fundamental separation between the modern
Greeks and their pretended ancestors.^

The inhabitants of Greece, although unrelated to the
Latins, present several analogies to the latter in their
character. They also possess, with little strength of will,
and little constancy, much levity, mobility, and irritability.

' In 1851, at the time of her enfranchisement, Greece possessed
about one million inhabitants, of whom a quarter were Albanians or
Wallachians. The population was a residue of invaders of all
peoples, and notably of Slavs. For centuries the Greeks properly
so called had disappeared from Greece. From the time of the
Roman conquest, Greece was regarded by every adventurer as a
nurs6ry of slaves, which every one might have recourse to with
impunity. Slave-traders brought as many as ten thousand Greek.
slaves to Rome at a single venture. Later on the Goths, Heruli,
Bulgarians, Wallachians, and so forth, continued to invade the
country and to lead its last inhabitants into slavery. Greece was
repopulated a little only by the invasions of the Slavs. The
language subsisted merely because it was spoken through all the
Byzantine East. The present population consists almost entirely
of Slavs, the ancient Greek type immortalised in sculpture having
totally disappeared. The celebrated Schliemann, whom I met while
travelling in Greece, has, however, called my attention to the fact
that the ancient Greek type is still to be met with in remarkable
purity in many of the islets of the Archipelago, which are inhabited
by a few fishers whose isolation and poverty have probably saved
them from invasion,

PRESENT STATE OF THE LATIN PEOPLES 207

They have the same horror of prolonged effort, the same
love of phrases, the same love of speechifying, the same
craving for equality, the same habit of confounding
dreams with realities.

However, I do not mention them here on account of
these analogies, but simply in order to show, by means
of an example full of instructiveness, the effects produced
on a nation, in less than fifty years, by the adoption
of Latin concepts, and notably by that of education.

Scarcely escaped from a long servitude, truly no school
for the spirit of initiative or for strength of will, the
modern Greeks imagined that they would be able to raise
themselves by means of instructibn. In a few years the
country was sprinkled with three thousand schools and
educational establishments of all sorts, in which were
carefully applied our disastrous Latin programmes of
education. " The French language," writes M. Fouill6e,
" is taught everywhere in Greece, concurrently with Greek
itself ; our national spirit, our literature, our arts, and our
education are far more in harmony with the Greek genius
than those of any other nation could be."

This theoretical and bookish education being good for
nothing but the production of functionaries, professors,
and lawyers, naturally produced nothing else : " Athens
is a great factory of useless and noxious lawyers." While
industry and agriculture have remained in a rudimentary
state, diplomas without employment are swarming, and,
as with men of Latin race subjected to the same edu-
cation, their sole ambition is to gain a Government berth.

"Every Greek," writes M. Politis, "believes that the
chief mission of the Government is to give a berth either
to himself or to a member of his family." If he does not
obtain it he immediately becomes a reactionary, a
Socialist, and raves against the tyranny of capital, although
capital is hardly known in Greece. The principal

2o8 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

function of the deputies is to find places for graduates of
the colleges.

Favouritism, insubordination, and general disorganisa-
tion have soon resulted from such a system of education.
Two generations of such outclassed persons have sufficed
to lead the country to the last degree of moral and
material ruin. Cultured Europe, who regarded the little
nation across the classic memories of the time of Pericles,
only began to lose her illusions when she beheld the
perfect cynicism with which the Greek politicians, after
having raised loans all over the continent, suppressed
their debt with a stroke of the pen by refusing to pay
interest and resuming the profits of the monopolies which
had been solemnly set aside as guarantees to the creditors,
on the very day when they found no more lenders .^
Europe was completely enlightened as to the demoralisa-
tion and disorganisation of all these brave prattlers when
she saw the fortunes of the Grseco-Turkish war unfolded,
and beheld the spectacle of whole armies at the mercy of
the wildest panics, the most inordinate, helter-skelter
flights, as soon as a mere Turkish detachment was espied
at a distance. Without the intervention of Europe the
Greeks would once more have disappeared from history,
and the world would have been no loser by it. We were
shown what things could exist under a deceptive veneer of

■ This process of the suppression of debts, commercially qualified
as bankruptcy, has been adopted by Portugal, the Latin republics of
America, Turkey, and many other countries. At first sight it
appeared a very simple matter to the politicians who made use of
it ; but they did not in any way perceive that these bankruptcies
must finally cause the countries that practised them to fall under the
strict surveillance, and consequently into the power, of other countries.
As, it was impossible to find among them the few men necessary to
administer their finances with integrity, they have been forced, as
Egypt and Turkey have been forced, to allow their finances to be
administered by foreign agents, placed under the control of their
respective governments.

PRESENT STATE OF THE LATIN PEOPLES 209

civilisation. Our young university men, so enthusiastic
over Greece, must at the same time have acquired a few
notions more serious than those to be found in their text-
books. Such of them as had escaped from the Ecole
normale with a few traces of the spirit of observation
must have made some melancholy reflections on the
results of Latin education, at perceiving to what a
depth of abasement the system had sunk a nation in
fifty years.

5. The Future which Threatens the Latin
Nations.

Such is, without, I trust, too great inaccuracy, the
present state of the Latin nations, and those that have
adopted the Latin concepts. While waiting till they shall
have found some means of raising themselves they must
not forget that in the new phase of evolution through
which the world is passing, there is room for none
but the strong, and that every nation which becomes
weakened is quickly destined to become the prey of its
neighbours, more especially at a period when the distant
markets are closing one by one.

This point of view is absolutely fundamental. It was
extremely well presented in a recent and famous speech
of Lord Salisbury's, from which I shall reproduce a few
extracts, in view of its importance and the authority of the
speaker. It points out with great clearness those con-
sequences of a lowered morality of which I have treated
further back, and which form an excellent barometer of
national decadence. The protests which this speech
excited in Spain cannot affect the exactitude of the pro-
positions enounced by this eminent statesman, nor of
the conclusions which he draws from them.

" You may roughly divide the nations of the world as
the living and the dying. On one side you have great

IS

2IO THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

countries of enormous power growing in power every
year, growing in wealth, growing in dominion, growing
in the perfection of their organisation. Railways have
given to them the power to concentrate upon any one
point the whole military force of their population and to
assemble armies of a magnitude and power never dreamt
of in the generations that have gone by. Science has
placed in the hands of those armies weapons ever grow-
ing in their efficacy of destruction, and, therefore, adding
to the power — fearfully to the power — of those who have
the opportunity of using them. By the side of these
splendid organisations, of which nothing seems to
diminish the forces and which present rival claims which
the future may only be able by a bloody arbitrament to
adjust — by the side of these there are a number of com-
munities which I can only describe as dying, though the
epithet applies to them of course in very different
degrees and with a very different amount of certain
application. They are mainly communities that are not
Christian, but I regret to say that is not exclusively the
case, and in these States disorganisation and decay are
advancing almost as fast as concentration and increasing
power are advancing in the living nations that stand
beside them. Decade after decade they are weaker,
poorer, and less provided with leading men or institutions
in which they can trust, apparently drawing nearer and
nearer to their fate and yet clinging with strange tenacity
to the life which they have got. In them misgovernment
is not only not cured but is constantly on the increase.
The society, and official society, the Administration, is a
mass of corruption, so that there is no firm ground on
which any hope of reform or restoration could be based,
and in their various degrees they are presenting a terrible
picture to the more enlightened portion of the world — ^a
picture which, unfortunately, the increase in the means of

Present state of the latin peoples 211

our information and communication draws with darker
and more conspicuous lineaments in the face of all
nations, appealing to their feelings as well as to their
interests, calling upon them to bring forward a remedy.
How long this state of things is likely to go on of course
I do not attempt to prophesy. All I can indicate is that
that process is proceeding, that the weak States are be-
coming weaker and the strong States are becoming
stronger. It needs no specialty of prophecy to point out
to you what the inevitable result of that combined process
must be. For one reason or for another — from the
necessities of politics or under the pretence of philan-
thropy — the living nations will gradually encroach on the
territory of the dying, and the seeds and causes of conflict
among civilised nations will speedily appear."

Are nations as shaken, as divided, as unprogressive as
the Latin nations of to-day to be subjected to Socialism ?
Is it not evident that such a fate would merely increase
their weakness, and render them a still easier prey to the
stronger nations ? Alas ! the politicians do not foresee
this, any more than the theologians of the Middle Ages,
absorbed, in the depths of their convents, by religious
controversies, were aware of the barbarians who were
breaking down their walls and preparing to massacre
them.

Must we, however, entirely despair of the future of the
Latin nations ? I still hope we need not. Necessity is a
mighty prince, and is able to change many things. It is
possible that, after a series of such profound calamities
and upheavals as history has hardly known, the Latin
peoples, wiser for experience, and having successfully
escaped from the covetousness of the watchful Powers,
will attempt the difficult undertaking of acquiring the
qualities in which they are now lacking, in order thence-
forth to succeed in life. Only one means is in their

212 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

power : entirely to change their system of education.
We cannot too highly praise those few apostles, such as
Jules Lemaitre and Bonvalot, that have applied themselves
to such a task. And these apostles can perform a great
deal ; they succeed in altering public opinion, and public
opinion is all-powerful to-day. But it will be no easy
task to sweep away the stubborn prejudices of the
universitaires and the intelleduels through which our
system of education is maintained in its present state.
History shows us that a dozen apostles have often been
sufficient to found a religion ; but religions, beliefs, and
opinions have failed in propagating themselves for want
of being able to reconcile the dozen.

But let us not be too pessimistic. History is so full of
unforeseen occurrences, and the world is on the eve of
undergoing such profound modifications, that it is im-
possible to-day to forecast the destinies of the nations.
And in any case the duty of the philosopher is performed
when he has pointed out to the nations the dangers which
threaten them.

BOOK IV

THE CONFLICT BETWEEN ECONOMIC NECESSITIES
AND THE ASPIRATIONS OF THE SOCIALISTS

CHAPTER I

THE INDUSTRIAL AND ECONOMIC EVOLUTION OF THE
PRESENT AGE

I. The new factors of Social Evolution which have been created by modern
discoveries : — The present is the age which has seen the greatest
changes in the shortest time — Present factors of social evolution —
The action of scientific and industrial discoveries — How they have
revolutionised all the conditions of existence. 2. Modern discoveries
as affecting the conditions of existence of societies: — Necessary material
changes of life — And the consequent moral and social changes — The
effect of machinery on the family, and on the mental evolution of the
workers — By reducing distance, machinery has transformed the world
into a single market, emancipated from the actions of Governments —
Transformations produced to-day by the discoveries of the laboratory
in the life of the nations — Possible employment of natural forces in
the future — Instability is everywhere succeeding to the stability of
centuries — The life of nations and the conditions of their progress
are becoming further and further removed from the action of Govern-
ments.

I. The new Factors of Social Evolution which

HAVE been created BY MODERN DISCOVERIES.

THE present, perhaps, is the one age in history which
has seen the greatest changes in the shortest time.
These changes are the consequence of the appearance of

factors very different from those which have hitherto

313

214 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

dominated society. One of the principal characteristics
of the present period is found precisely in the transforma-
tion of the determining causes of the evolution of nations.
For centuries religious and political factors have exer-
cised a fundamental influence, but to-day this influence
has considerably paled. Economic and industrial factors,
for a long time very unimportant, are to-day assuming
an absolutely preponderating influence. It was a matter
of perfect indiff^erence to Csjsar, to Louis Quatorze, to
Napoleon, or to any Western sovereign of old, whether
China did or did not possess coal. But now the sole
fact that she should possess it and utilise it would soon
have the most important effect on the progress of
European civilisation. Formerly, a Birmingham manu-
facturer or an English farmer would never have been
concerned to know whether India could grow wheat or
manufacture cotton. This fact, which for centuries was
so insignificant in the eyes of England, must henceforth
have for her a far greater importance than an event as
significant in appearance as the defeat of the Invincible
Armada or the overthrow of Napoleon.

But it is not only the progress of distant nations that
has such an important effect on the nations of Europe.
The rapid transformations of industry have revolutionised
all the conditions of existence. It has justly been re-
marked that until the beginning of our century the
instruments of industry had scarcely changed for thou-
sands of years ; they were, in fact, identical, as regards
their essential parts, with the appliances which figure on
the interior of Egyptian tombs four thousand years old.'
But for a hundred years now there has been no com-
parison possible between the industry of the present and

' Proof will be afforded by a glance at the plates of my work Les
Premieres Civilisations de I'Orient, in which the industrial implements
of ancient Egypt are represented after the sepulchral paintings.

INDUSTRIAL AND ECONOMIC EVOLUTION 215

that of the ancient world. Industry has been completely
transformed by the utilisation, by means of steam engines,
of the solar energy latent in coal. The most modest of
manufacturers has in his cellars more than enough coal
to execute a far harder task than any the twenty thousand
slaves attributed to Crassus could have performed. We
have steam-hammers a single blow of which represents
the strength of ten thousand men. For the United
States alone the power necessary to effect the annual
railway traffic, that is to say, the energy extracted from
coal, is valued at the equivalent of thirteen million men
and fifty-three million horses. Admitting the absurd
hypothesis of the possibility of obtaining so many men
and animals, the expense of their keep would be
;£2, 200,000,000, instead of the ^100,000,000 or so which
represent the work executed by mechanical motors. '

2. Modern Discoveries as affecting the Conditions
OF Existence of Societies.

The mere fact that man has discovered the means to
extract from coal the energies which the sun has slowly
stored up in it during millions of years has entirely
revolutionised the material conditions of life. In creating
new resources it has created new needs, and the changes
in everyday life have soon brought in their train trans-
formations in the moral and social state of the nations.
Having invented machinery, man has become enslaved
by it, as he was of old enslaved by the gods created by
his imagination. He has had to submit to the economic

' M. de Foville has calculated that the transport of one ton
French of merchandise per kilometre costs 3 fr. 33 by means of
human porters— (a sum which must be increased to 10 fr. in Africa),
o fr. 87 by beast of burden, 6 centimes by rail in Europe, and 9'5
centimes in America.

2i6 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

laws which it has by itself established. It is machinery
which has allowed women and children to enter the
factory, and which at the same time has disorganised
the family and the home. Whilst making work easy to
the worker, and obliging him to specialise himself, it has
lessened his intelligence and his power of effort. The
artisan of the old state of things has sunk to the rank
of common labourer, from which he can only very rarely
rise.

The industrial rdle of machinery is not limited to the
immense multiplication of available power. In trans-
forming the means of transport it has considerably
reduced the distances which separate country from
country, and has brought nations face to face which
were formerly completely separated. In a few weeks,
instead of in many months, the West and the East may
meet ; in a few hours, in a few minutes even, they can
exchange thoughts. Thanks to coal again, the products
of one country are rapidly distributed among the others,
and the whole world has become a vast market emanci-
pated from the actions of Governments. The bloodiest
revolutions, the longest wars, have never had results
comparable to those of the scientific discoveries of the
century — discoveries which portend results even more
far-reaching and more fruitful in the future.

It is not only steam and electricity which have trans-
formed the conditions of life for modern humanity.
Inventions almost trivial in appearance have contributed,
and are incessantly continuing to contribute, to modify
these conditions. A simple laboratory experiment com-
pletely changes the conditions of prosperity of a province,
or even of a country. Thus, for example, the conversion
of anthracine into alizarine has killed the madder in-
dustry, and at the same stroke has impoverished the
departments which lived by it. Lands worth ;£8oo

INDUSTRIAL AND ECONOMIC EVOLUTION 217

per acre have fallen to less than ^^40. When the arti-
ficial production of alcohol and of sugar have entered
into the regions of practical industry — and the one
has already been effected in the laboratory, while the
other would appear probable shortly — certain countries
will be forced to abandon their sources of wealth, and
reduced to poverty. Beside such catastrophes what were
such events as the Hundred Years' War, the Reformation,
or the Revolution ? We may form some idea of the
far-reaching consequences of such commercial oscilla-
tions when we consider what France lost in ten years
by the invasion of a microscopic insect, the phylloxera.
The loss sustained on 2,470,000 acres of vineyards,
from 1877 to 1887, has been reckoned at ;^28o,ooo,ooo.
It was almost as great a disaster numerically as the ex-
pense of our last war. Spain was temporarily enriched
by this loss, since it was necessary to make up the
deficiency by purchasing wines from her. From an
economic point of view the result was the same as
though we had been conquered by the armies of
Spain, and condemned to pay her an enormous annual
tribute.

We cannot too strongly insist on the importance of
these great industrial oscillations, which are one of the
inevitable conditions of the present age, and which" as
yet are only beginning. Their principal result is to
deprive of all fixity those conditions of existence which
of old seemed stable enough to brave the passage of
centuries.

" One may ask oneself," writes the English historian
Maine, "what is the most terrible calamity which
can be conceived as befalling great populations. The
answer might perhaps be — a sanguinary war, a deso-
lating famine, a deadly epidemic disease. Yet none
of these disasters would cause as much and as pro-

2i8 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

longed human suffering as a revolution in fashion under
which women should dress, as men practically do, in
one material of one colour. There are many flourishing
and opulent cities in Europe and America which would
be condemned by it to bankruptcy or starvation, and it
would be worse there than a famine or pestilence in
China, India, or Japan."

The hypothesis has nothing improbable in it, and it
is possible that the revolution in female attire caused by
the increasingly general use of the bicycle may very soon
make it a reality. But the discoveries of science will
assuredly produce changes of very different significance.
Chemistry, for example, a science which is only begin-
ning to define itself, holds unforeseen things in reserve
for us. When we are able to employ with ease tem-
peratures of from 3000 to 4000 Cent., or temperatures
neighbouring on the absolute zero, such as we are now
beginning to procure, an entire new chemistry will be
necessary. Theory tells us already that our " simple
bodies " are very probably nothing but the condensations
of other elements, of whose properties we are totally
ignorant. One day, perhaps, as the chemist Berthelot
suggested in a recent speech, science will fabricate all
alimentary substances, and then " there will no longer
be fields covered with crops, nor vineyards, nor pastures
full of cattle. There will no longer be any distinction
between fertile and sterile regions."

We can further imagine a future in which the forces
of nature will be at the disposition of all our require-
ments, and will almost entirely replace human labour.
There is no longer anything chimerical in supposing
that, thanks to electricity, that marvellous agent for the
transformation and transport of energy, the power of the
winds, the seas, and waterfalls will presently be at the
disposal of man. The falls of Niagara, which are

INDUSTRIAL AND ECONOMIC EVOLUTION 219

already partially utilised, possess a motive power of
17,000,000 horse power, and the time is not distant when
this energy, whose employment has scarcely been com-
menced, will be transported to a distance by means of
cable conductors. The h^at of the sun and the central
heat of the earth are also inexhaustible sources of
energy.

But without insisting on the discoveries of the future,
and confining ourselves solely to the progress of the last
fifty years, we see that our conditions of existence
are changing every day, and are changing in such a
precipitate fashion that society is called upon to undergo
transformations far more rapid than are proper to the
mental state created by the long and gradual inheritance
of the units composing it. Instability is everywhere suc-
ceeding to the stability of centuries.

From the foregoing it results that the present age is at
once a destructive and a creative age. It seems as
though none of our past ideas, none of our past con-
ditions of life, could survive in the face of the changes
determined by science and industry. The difficulty of
adapting ourselves to these new necessities consists-
above all in this : that our habits and our sentiments
change slowly, while external circumstances change too
quickly and too radically to allow the old conceptions to
which we would fain hold to continue for any length of
time. No one can say what social state will be born of
these unforeseen destructions and creations. But this
we see very clearly : that those phenomena which are
most important to the life of States, and the very con-
dition of their progress, are more and more subtracted
from their will, and are ruled by economic and industrial
necessities over which they are powerless. And one
thing that we already foresee, and that will appear still
more clearly in the following pages, is the fact that the

220 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

claims of the Socialists will appear more and more con-
trary to the economic evolution which is preparing itself
without them, and far beyond their reach. They will
none the less have to comply with it, as with all those
natural fatalities to whose laws man has hitherto been
subject.

CHAPTER II

THE ECONOMIC STRUGGLES BETWEEN THE EAST AND
THE WEST

I. Economic competition : — The Socialists ignore the necessities which
dominate the modern world — The will of Governments is more and
more subject to the exterior economic conditions to which they are
obliged to adapt themselves — The world of industrial and economic
relations forms nowadays one single world, and the different countries
are becoming less and less able to do as they please — Nations tend
more and more to be ruled by external necessities, and not by their
individual desires — Consequences of the reduction of distances
between the East and the West — Results of the economic struggle
between nations having very large requirements and those having
very small requirements — The value of merchandise on the market is
determined by its value on the market in which it can be produced at
the least cost — Result of the competition between European goods and
the same goods manufactured by the Orientals — Why England is
gradually being obliged to give up agriculture — Competition between
India and Japan — Future of European commerce — Future of Russia —
Eastern competition and Socialism. 2. Remedies : — Objections
raised by economists with regard to the consequences of the struggle
between East and West — Pretended excessive production — Why the
arguments of the economists can have no value except for the future
— Protectionism — Its artificial and makeshift character — The agricul-
tural nations and the industrial nations — Various remedies sought by
the Anglo-Saxons for the competition with the East — Why they are
turning to Africa — Difficulties encountered by the Latin nations in the
domain of industrial and economic competition.

I, ECONOMIC Competition.

I HAVE just briefly indicated that the economic and
industrial evolution of the world has overturned the
old conditions of human existence. This fact will appear
more clearly when we come to consider some of the
problems which present themselves to-day.

222 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

In the setting forth of their claims and their dreams .
the Socialists have manifested a complete ignorance of
the necessities which dominate the modern world.
They always reason as though the universe were limited
to the country in which they live, as though all that
passed in the rest of the world could have no influence
on the circles in which they propagate their doctrines,
as though the measures they propose would not com-
pletely upset the relations of the nation which should
apply them with all the other nations of the world. It
would have been quite possible for a nation thus to
isolate itself a few centuries ago, but to-day matters are
no longer the same. The role of the governors of each
nation is tending more and more to being conditioned
by economic phenomena of very remote origin, abso-
lutely independent of the doings of statesmen, and to
which they must submit. The art of government con-
sists to-day in adapting oneself as well as may be to
external necessities which our desires are powerless to
affect.

A country, to be sure, is always a country, but the
world of science, industry, and economic i^elations
nowadays forms one single world, whose laws are the
more rigorous in that they are imposed by necessities,
and not by codes. In the region of industry and
economics no country is to-day free to do as it pleases,
simply because the evolution of industry, agriculture and
commerce have far-reaching effects in all the nations.
Economic and industrial events in distant parts of the
earth may force the nation which is most completely
removed from those parts to transform its agriculture,
its industrial processes, its methods of manufacture, its
commercial customs, and consequently its institutions
and its laws. Nations tend more and more to be ruled
by widespread necessities, and not by individual desires.

STRUGGLES BETWEEN EAST AND WEST 223

The action of Governments is therefore tending to
become more and more feeble and uncertain. This is
one of the most characteristic phenomena of the present
age.

The problem which we are about to consider in this
chapter will afford an excellent illustration of the
preceding remarks. It will show us once again how
superhcial and impossible of realisation are the formulae
for universal happiness proposed by the Socialists.

This problem, which I was one of the first to point out
at a time already distant, is that of the commercial ,
struggle between the East and the West. The reduction
of distances by means of steam and the evolution of
industry have resulted in bringing the Orient to our
doors, and in transforming its inhabitants into com-
petitors with the West. These competitors, to whom we
formerly exported our products, began to make them
themselves as soon as they possessed our machines, and
instead of buying them of us they now want to sell them
to us. They will succeed in so doing all the more
readily in that their needs, by long-continued custom,
are almost negligible, so that the cost of production is
far less than in Europe. The average Oriental workman
can live on twopence or threepence a day, while the
European workman cannot live on less than three or
four shillings a day. As the price of labour always
regulates the price of manufactures, and as the value of
the latter in any market whatever is determined by their
value in which they can be delivered at the lowest price,
it follows that our European manufacturers are seeing
all their industries threatened by rivals producing the
same goods at a twentieth of the cost. India and Japan
have already entered on the phase which I long ago
predicted, and are progressing rapidly ; China will soon
be a third competitor. The imports of foreign-made

224 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

goods into Europe are gradually increasing, and the
exports of European-made goods are decreasing. It is
not the military invasion of the Orientals that we have to
fear, as has been suggested, but that of their products.

For a long time this competition has been confined to
the sphere of agricultural produce, and from its results
we can judge what will happen when it extends to manu-
factured articles.

The first results of this competition have been, as M.
M61ine has recently observed in the Chamber of Deputies,
to lower by one-half in twenty years the value of agricul-
tural products — cereals, wool, wines, alcohol, sugar, and
so forth. Wool, for example, which in 1882 was worth
about ninepence per pound, is worth only half that sum
to-day. Tallow has fallen from 36s. to i6s.

Many economists, and myself amongst the number,
consider these reductions in price to be advantageous,
since the public, that is to say, the greater number, finally
profit by them ; but it is easy to realise that there are
points of view from which these reductions may be re-
garded as harmful. The gravest inconvenience resulting
therefrom is that of placing agriculture in a precarious
condition, so that some countries might be obliged to
abandon it, a state of things that at certain moments
might have serious consequences.

The hypothesis that some countries may be forced to
renounce agriculture is by no means chimerical, for it is
being gradually realised in England. Having to compete
with both India and America in the matter of cereals, she
has gradually given up producing them, and this in spite
of the perfection of the English methods, which allow of
crops of 30 bushels to the acre. To-day the annual
production of corn in England has fallen to 63,000,000
bushels, while the annual consumption is 193,000,000
bushels. England is therefore obliged to buy 130,000,000

STRUGGLES BETWEEN EAST AND WEST 225

abroad. If she were imprisoned in her island, or if she
had not the necessary means to procure this surplus, a
great part of her inhabitants would be condemned to die
of famine.

France, essentially an agricultural country, has been
able to prolong the struggle, thanks to protection, a suffi-
ciently temporary and fictitious means. Her interest in
the struggle is vital ; but how much longer will she be
able to hold out ? She produces annually 275 millions
of bushels, a figure which may fall in a bad year to
200, or rise in a good year to 370 millions. Wheat is
to-day worth about 7s. 6d. per cwt., and has been steadily
falling in price for several years. This price, however, is
artificial, since foreign corn is subject to a protective duty
of nearly 3s., its actual value being 4s. 6d., the sale price
on the foreign markets, in London, for instance, or New
York. This price must infallibly suffer a further fall.
In the Argentine RepubHc Italian cultivators are able to
produce wheat at is. lod. per bushel.

Will it be possible much longer to correct this progres-
sive fall by equally progressive protective duties, intended
to maintain artificially the dearness of a staple food, and
consequently to prevent the people from benefiting by
the universal cheapness ? As the annual consumption of
wheat in France is 120 millions of hectolitres, the present
tariff of 7 frs. per hectolitre, which raises the price of
bread by at least a third, represents an annual sum of
;^33,6oo,ooo levied on the whole populace for the benefit
of a few large landowners, for the majority of farmers
produce only sufficient for their own needs, and have
none to sell. All that can be said in favour of such
arbitrary proceedings is that they possess a provisional
value in the matter of prolonging the existence of agri-
culture in a country, or allowing it time enough to
ameliorate its condition. But soon no Government will

16

226 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

be powerful enough to maintain artificially the dearness
of a staple of life.

But the East had hardly entered the lists when the
decadence of European agriculture began. The origin
of this decadence is to be found in the production of
cereals in America, where land costs next to nothing,
while in Europe it is extremely dear. When America in
her turn found herself in competition with countries such
as India, where not only does the land cost nothing, as in
the United States, but where labour is ten times as cheap,
she suffered the same fate as England, and her agriculture
is to-day threatened with complete ruin. The agricul-
turalists of America find themselves to-day in the most
precarious situation. M. de Mandat-Grancy makes men-
tion of farms which were formerly worth $300 an acre
which to-day cannot find purchasers at f 10. No protec-
tive tariff can remedy this state of things, since the
Americans are concerned in exporting not in buying
cereals. No protective tariff can prevent them from
finding themselves in competition on the foreign markets
with countries which can produce wheat at far lower
prices.

Limited at first to raw materials and agricultural pro-
ducts, the struggle between East and West has gradually
extended itself to industrial products. In the Farther
East, in Japan and India, for example, the wages of
factory hands are rarely more than twopence-halfpenny
per diem, and their foremen do not receive very much
more.

M. de Mandat-Grancy mentions a factory near Calcutta
employing more than 1,500 hands, of which the native
sub-manager receives a salary of rather less than _^io per
annum. With the price of production so low as this it is
not surprising that the Indian exports have increased in
ten years from ;^28,5oo,ooo to more than ;£i6o,ooo,ooo.

STRUGGLES BETWEEN EAST AND WEST 227

But India possesses but little coal, while Japan possesses
it in such quantity that she is able to export it at half the
price of English coal. The progress of this country has
consequently been even more rapid than that of India,
Possessing coal, that greatest of the sources of national
wealth, she had only to buy and imitate European
machines in order to find herself on a perfect footing
of equality with Europe as regards productive capacity,
and on a greatly superior footing as regards economy of
production, on account of the low rate of wages.

To-day Japan has large factories : cotton factories, for
example, employing 6,000 workers,^ and so prosperous that
they are able to pay dividends of from 10 per cent, to 20
per cent., while the dividends of equivalent concerns in
England are every day growing less, and have fallen to
3 per cent, for the most prosperous. Others are failing,
and no longer declare dividends, simply because their
exports are every day diminishing on account of Oriental
competition.

The Orientals have begun to manufacture, one by one,
all European products, and always at such low prices as
to render competition useless. Watches, clocks, pottery,
paper, perfumery, and even so-called Paris-made goods,
are now being made in Japan, European articles are
thus being gradually driven from the East, There are
some manufactures, matches, for instance, which the
English formerly exported at the rate of ^^24,000 per
annum, a sale that has fallen to ;^400, while the Japanese

' The factory of Kanegafuchi in Japan employs nearly 6,000 hands,
working night and day in twelve-hour shifts. The wages are about
fivepence a day, and are paid in silver, the market price of which is,
as we know, half that of gold. The following figures are taken from
the statistical report on the Japanese Empire, published in 1897 at
Tokio by Mr. Hanabusa, chief of the Statistical Department ; they
are the average wages of different classes of workmen ; — Agricultural
labourers, is. yd. per week ; printers, 7s. per week ; carpenters,
8s. 9d.

228 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

production of this article has risen from nothing to a sum
which in 1895 amounted to ;^9i,ooo. In Geio the Japa-
nese exports in umbrellas amounted to ^£28 ; five years
later it had risen to ;^52,ooo, and it is the same with every
article they have begun to manufacture.

This wealth of production soon led the Japanese to
extend their markets, and in order to avoid dependence
on the navies of Europe they first began to purchase
vessels and then to build them for themselves. They
have great liners, built on the latest models, and lit with
electric light. One single company, the Nippon Yusen
Kaisha, possesses 47, which compete with our Messageries
Maritimes, and especially with the Peninsular and Oriental
Company. They have established a bi-monthly service
between Japan and Bombay, another with Australia, and
are preparing to establish one to France and England.
The crews of these vessels are paid at the rate of 8s. ^d.
per month, and are fed on a few bags of rice.

Although the Chinese, despite their military inferiority,
are from many points of view greatly superior to the
Japanese, they have not yet entered the industrial move-
ment, but we can see the time approaching when they
will do so. We can foresee also that with her immense
and frugal population, her colossal coal deposits, she will
in a few years be the first commercial centre of the world,
and the ruler of all markets, and that the Bourse of Pekin
will determine the prices of merchandise in the rest of the
world. We may already form some idea of the power of
Chinese competition when we consider the fact that the
Americans, recognising the impossibility of struggling
against them, have been obliged, as their only resource,
to expel the Chinese from their territory by force. The
hour is not far distant when a cargo of European mer-
chandise will be a rarity on the Eastern seas. What is to
be done ?

STRUGGLES BETWEEN EAST AND WEST 229

Nearly all the English and German consuls in the Far
East are unanimous in their reports on this question.
Even our own agents, despite the little interest they take
in commerce — above all, despite the incurable incapacity
of the Latin mind to form an independent conception of
foreign affairs — are beginning to perceive and to point out
what is going on around them.

In this ever-increasing economic struggle everything is
in the favour of the East. The depreciation in value of
silver in the West has made competition still more difficult
for us. Silver, the only currency in the East, has there
retained its full value, while in Europe its value has
decreased by almost a half. When a Hindoo, Japanese,
or Chinese merchant sends to Europe j^ioo worth of
wheat, cotton, or any other merchandise, he receives ;^ioo
in gold, which he can exchange for nearly ;^200 worth
of silver, which he then has only to turn into silver money,
with which he pays his workmen. These ;^200 in silver
have in his country the same value that they had twenty-
five years ago, for the depreciation of silver in Europe
has had no parallel in the East, where, moreover, the cost
of labour has everywhere remained the same. As the
cost of manufacture is no higher than it formerly was,
the Oriental manufacturer, merely by selling an article in
Europe, disposes of it at double its cost price. Of course
he also has to pay double for anything he may buy of us,
since he must pay ;^200 of silver for j^ioo of gold, so that
he has every incentive to sell us more and more and to
buy from us less and less. The present rate of exchange
accordingly offers the East an immense premium on ex-
portation. No protective tariff short of one absolutely
prohibitive can contend with such differences in the cost
of production.

Accordingly, European commerce would appear fatally
destined to being reduced, in the near future, to the ex-

230 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

change of merchandise costing twenty times as much as it
costs in the East, and paid for in gold, against products
costing one-twentieth as much and paid for in silver. As
no exchange can continue for long under such conditions,
and is lingering on awhile merely because the East has
not yet completed the organisation of its industrial
machinery, it is plainly evident that Europe is fated
shortly to lose her clientele in the Far East as she has
already lost it in America. Not only will she lose it, but
she will very soon be condemned — being unable to pro-
duce enough to nourish her inhabitants — to buy of her
old clients without being able to sell them anything.
The Japanese have no illusions as to this state of things.
One of their ministers of foreign affairs, Mr. Okuna,
speaking of Europe in a recently published speech,
expressed himself in these words : " She exhibits
symptoms of decrepitude. The coming century will
see her constitutions in fragments and her empires in
ruins."

I believe Japan will be ruined long before Europe, for
the simple reason that she has superimposed, on her own
civilisation, and without being able to fuse the two,
another civilisation which has nothing in common with
her past, and which will presently lead her into the
completest anarchy. But China, by far the superior of
Japan in many respects, and notably in the matter of
commercial honesty, is destined to have a powerful future.
These small-skulled Asiatics, who can effect nothing but
servile copies of our inventions, are doubtless barbarians,
but history shows that the mightiest empires have always
been brought low by barbarians.

Many causes will arise to complicate, for the greater
number of the European nations, the difficulties of the
commercial struggle with the East. When the Trans-
Siberian railway is finished all the commerce between the

STRUGGLES BETWEEN EAST AND WEST 231

East and the West will tend to concentrate itself in the
hands of Russia. As we know, this railway will cross part
of China and unite Russia with Japan. The 130 millions
of Russia will then be in contact with the 400 millions of
China, and Russia will become the first commercial power
of the world, since the transit between the East and the
West will necessarily be in her hands. From London to
Hong-Kong is about thirty-six days by sea. By the
Trans-Siberian railway it will be about eighteen. The
sea-route will doubtless then be as completely abandoned
as the Cape route is to-day, and what then will be the use
of England's commercial fleets ? France will lose what
little trade remains to her. In that day she will perhaps
regret the ;^40o,ooo,ooo lent to Russia, a large portion of
which will have gone to the making of this disastrous
competition. In 1887 we had ;^8o,ooo,ooo in Russian
securities : ten years later the amount reached ^^400,000,000.
It is not unreasonable to ask whether we should not have
gained much more by devoting this enormous sum to the
development of our own industries and our commerce.^

■ When the Trans-Siberian railway, whose importance none of
our statesmen seem to understand, is terminated, Russia will be the
mistress of China and her 400,000,000 inhabitants ; and as she main-
tains a system of absolute protectionism, against both her allies and
other nations, the East will be closed to Europe. India, and even
Siam, for aOiances count for nothing in the face of political interests,
will infallibly be absorbed into this gigantic empire, which will then
be the greatest power in the world. The ports and concessions
recently obtained in Manchuria, which contains 120 millions of
inhabitants, render Russia the sovereign mistress of this province,
from which she will be able to recruit innumerable armies. The
Chinese Imperial Court is to-day reduced to seeking another capital,
in order to preserve some remnants of independence.

A circumstance which no one could have foreseen, the conquest
of the Philippines by the United States, is the only thing that may
retard or prevent the absorption of the East by Russia, an absorption
which would be ruinous to the West, and which would mark the
end of the progress of liberal ideas in Europe. The conquest of the
Philippines, so near as they are to China, brings the United States

232 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

The struggle between the East and West whose develop-
ment I have just denoted is only at its commencement, and
we can but suspect the issue. The dreamers of perpetual
peace, of universal disarmament, imagine wars to be the
most disastrous of struggles. They certainly do destroy
a large number of individuals, but it appears highly prob-
able that the industrial and commercial struggles which
are approaching will be far more murderous and will
accumulate more ruin and disaster than ever did the
bloodiest wars. Such struggles, so peaceful in appear-
ance, are in reality implacable. Pity is unknown to
them ; to conquer or to disappear are the only alterna-
tives.

Socialism scarcely glances at such problems. Its con-
ceptions are too narrow, its horizon too limited. Those
nations in which it has most firmly taken root will be
those for which the commercial struggle with the East
will be hardest, and the defeat of the vanquished most
rapid. Only those nations which possess a sufficient
degree of initiative in industrial matters, sufficient intel-
ligence to perfect their machinery, and to adapt it to new
necessities, will be able to defend themselves. It is not
Collectivism, with its ideal of slavish equality in work and
wages, that will be able to furnish our workers with the
means to struggle against the invasion of Eastern produce.
Where will it find the money to pay its workers when
their wares find no more purchasers, when all the factories

into the midst of the Chinese question, which Spain was too insig-
nificant to affect. The influence of the United States and England
will perhaps re-establish the equilibrium of affairs, which has been
tending more and more in one direction. We are certainly on the
eve of a gigantic struggle, the struggle for the partition of the East,
which will undoubtedly fill the coming century. The disarmament
which is proposed to us, I imagine not without irony, does not appear
to be a thing of the immediate future. Those nations that accepted
it would, no doubt, make a few economies, but at the cost of losing
their lives, and that very quickly.

STRUGGLES BETWEEN EAST AND WEST 233

have one by one been closed, and when all the capitalists
have departed for countries in which they meet with
hearty welcome and easily earned dividends, in the place
of incessant persecutions ?

2. The Remedies.

I have just shown how the economic competition
between East and West arose and has developed. The
facts I have cited show in what manner the economic
necessities of the present time are contrary to the aspira-
tions of the Socialists, and how ill the latter have chosen
the time for presenting their claims. Now, in examining
the possible remedies for the economic competition which
we see growing before our eyes, we shall once again
discover how incompatible is victory in the struggle with
the Socialist ideal.

I must observe, first of all, that it is easy to attack in
theory the pessimistic conclusions I have drawn from
this state of things. The economists will tell you, with
reason, that hitherto there has never been such a thing as
actual over-production of any article ; that the slightest
excess of production is perforce accompanied by a fall in
price ; and that if as a consequence of competition the
European workman is obliged to content himself with a
salary of a few pence a day, the smallness of his wages
will be without inconvenience when for these pence
he is able to obtain all the articles for which he had
formerly to pay several shillings. The argument is per-
fectly just, but it is hardly applicable to any but a remote
period, a period, therefore, that does not interest us to-day.
Before this phase of the universal abatement of the value
of things there will elapse a long transitional period
of disorder. This period will be all the more difficult to
live through in that the conflict between East and West
is not merely a struggle between men earning different

234 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

wages, but also, and above all, a struggle between men
whose needs are different. This is the factor which
made competition with the Chinese impossible to the
Americans, who were obliged to expel them. The
equality of chances could be established only by the
Chinese establishing themselves in America and acquiring
the tastes and rates of expenditure of the Americans.
But they were subject to influences too deeply ancestral
to change themselves to that extent. With no further
needs beyond a cup of tea and a handful of rice, they
were able to content themselves with salaries far inferior
to those demanded by American workers.

Whatever the future may be, it is the present that
concerns us, and the solutions we have to seek are present
solutions ; so that the remedy that the economists await
— the remedy of the spontaneous evolution of things — is
for the time being worthless. As for the system of pro-
tection, it constitutes a provisional solution, and one of
easy application, and accordingly we see the nations of
Europe and America adopting it one by one. A small
and sparsely populated country may, theoretically, sur-
round itself with a high wall, and refrain from troubling
itself about what is passing elsewhere ; but where are
such countries to be found in the West ? According to
all statistics, there is hardly a country in all Europe, on
account of the excessive increase of population, which
could produce enough to feed its inhabitants for more
than six months. Supposing that a country did surround
itself with the wall of which I have spoken, at the end
of six months it would be obliged, under pain of perishing
of hunger, to break through the wall and go forth to buy
food ; but with what would it pay for the corn and other
produce it required ? Hitherto Europe has acquired
the products of the East by means of merchandise ; but
very soon the East will have no more need of our mer-

STRUGGLES BETWEEN EAST AND WEST 235

chandise. For commerce is based on exchange, of which
money is only the conventional symbol.

Apart, then, from scientific discoveries, which are
certainly possible, the future of Europe, and especially
of those countries which live principally by their com-
merce, would appear to be sufficiently gloomy.

In the coming struggle two categories of nations alone
would seem to be fitted to resist. First, those nations
whose agriculture is so well developed, and whose
populations are so small, that they are able to suffice
for themselves and almost completely to abandon outside
commerce. Secondly, those nations whose initiative,
power of will, and industrial capacities are highly
superior to those of the Orientals.

Few European nations to-day find themselves in the
former category ; of those few France, happily for herself,
is one of the foremost. She produces almost enough to
support her populace, and it is by a very sure instinct
that she takes care not to increase her population, and
disdains the lamentations of the statisticians on that point.
She would only have to increase her agricultural returns
or reduce her population a little in order to produce
enough for her subsistence. Far from concerning our-
selves with industry, in which we are bad, or with com-
merce, in which we are incapable, it is towards agriculture
that we should direct all our efforts.^

The English and the Americans belong to the second
of the categories I have indicated. But only by means of

' From every point of view our agriculture should be developed.
At an agricultural conference held in Lyons a few years ago M. de
la Roque pointed out that the mortality in the provinces is under
20 per thousand, and is more than 27 per thousand in the towns,
and concluded that by the mere fact of emigration into the towns
France had lost 700,000 inhabitants. " If our crops of wheat or wine
were to fail, the provinces would lose no less than eight to ten
million inhabitants." This is an interesting example of the far-
reaching effects of economic facts.

236 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

extreme activity and constant improvement of machinery
will they be able to maintain their superiority. It will be
a conflict of superior capacity against mediocre and
inferior capacity. It is thus that the Americans have
been able, by immense efforts, gradually to decrease the
prices of production by means of machinery, despite the
high prices of labour. We find in the United States
blast-furnaces of which a single one can run i,ooo
tons French of metal per day, while ours can found at
most ICO or 200 tons ; steel works which roll 1,500
tons per day, while ours turn out 150 in the same time ;
machines which can load 1,000 tons per hour on rail ;
others which lade a vessel of 4,000 tons in a few hours,
and so forth.

To keep on this footing qualities of initiative and
capacities are requisite that few nations to-day possess,
and which are the most precious of all inheritances,
although so antipathetic to the Socialists. With such
qualities no difficulties are too great to be surmounted.

If all these efforts do not avail the Anglo-Saxons they
will find other remedies ; and they have already sought
them. Several manufacturers have succeeded in com-
peting with the Orientals on their own ground, by
founding factories in the East and employing native
workmen. English manufacturers who could only
carry on business at a loss in England have settled in
India and entered into competition with English manu-
factures. But this emigration of capital and capacities,
if it were to become general, would leave the English
workman inevitably without work, and could scarcely
have any other result than to point out to the capitalists
the road that the claims of the Socialists may one day
force them to take. We may well ask ourselves what
would become of a State thus deprived of all its capital and
all its best brains, and composed entirely of mediocrities

STRUGGLES BETWEEN EAST AND WEST 237

in talent and fortune. Then would Socialism be able to
develop itself freely, and to impose its iron slavery.

But the English statesmen are seeking other means to
avoid the dangers they see approaching. Knowing that
the East must soon be closed to their shipping, they are
now turning to Africa, and we have seen how England
and Germany have in a few years taken possession of the
whole continent, leaving the Latin nations only a few
strips of worthless territory. The empire which the
English have made for themselves, which reaches from
Alexandria to the Cape, comprising nearly half of Africa,
will very soon be covered with railways and telegraphs,
and in a few years will undoubtedly form one of the
wealthiest regions of the world.

The hereditary aptitudes of the Latin peoples, their
social organisation, and their system of education, forbid
them all such ambitious designs. Their aptitudes are in
the directions of agriculture and the arts. They succeed
very indifferently in industry, in foreign trade, and above all
in colonisation, even when their colonies are at their very
doors, as Algeria. It is a fact to be regretted, certainly,
but not to be denied, and the knowledge of it is at least
useful so far as it helps to make us understand in what
direction our efforts should or should not be directed.

For the rest, the Latin nations need not, perhaps, too
greatly regret that they will not be able to play a very
active part in the industrial and economic struggle which
appears destined, in the near future, to displace the poles
of civilisation. This struggle, painful enough for energetic
natures, will be absolutely impossible for others. The
work of simple labourers is always hard and ill-paid.
Contrary to the dreams of the Socialists, the future will
show it still harder and still worse paid. 1 1 seems as though
our civilisations can prolong themselves only by means of
harder and harder servitude on the part of the mass of

2^8 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

workers. Industry and machinery must grow more and
more oppressive. Only at the cost of labour every day
more painful, at the cost of a terrible over-pressure that
will necessitate veritable hecatombs of human lives, will
the industrial and commercial nations of Europe be able
without too great hazard of failure to encounter the
peoples of the East on economic grounds. In every case
there will be a war far more atrocious, murderous, and
desperate than the military slaughters of old, for no
illusion, no hope, will hover over it. The beacon-lights
of the old consoling faiths are flickering, and will soon
be extinct for ever. Man, who fought of old for his
hearth, his country, or his gods, seems condemned to
have no ideal in the struggle of the near future but that
of eating his fill, or at least not to die of hunger.

CHAPTER III

THE ECONOMIC STRUGGLES BETWEEN THE WESTERN
PEOPLES.

I. The results ot hereditary aptitudes in a nation : — The variety of the apti-
tudes which have helped the progress of nations at various periods of
civilisation — The qualities which for a long time ensured the supremacy
of the Latins — The greater part of these qualities are now without
outlet — In the present phase of the evolution of the world industrial
and commercial aptitudes take a front rank — Why the slight industrial
and commercial capacities of the Latins were sufficient formerly, but
are not sufficient now. 2. The industrial and commercial situation of
the Latin peoples : — The results revealed by statistics — The indications
given by our foreign consuls — Characteristic facts revealing the
decadence of our industry and commerce — The apathy, indifference,
horror of effort, and lack of initiative of our commercial men — Various
examples — The invasion of the French market by German goods —
The decadent state of our shipping — Our commercial relations with
our colonies are established by strangers— The cost of our colonies,
and what they bring us — The steady abatement of the quality of our
products. 3. Causes of the industrial and commercial superiority of the
Germans : — Slight influence of their military superiority over their
industrial and commercial success — ^Technical instruction of the
Germans — Their skill in taking the tastes of their customers into
account — How they inform themselves of the requirements of their
customers in various countries — Their sentiments of solidarity and
association — The elements of their information.

I. The Results of Hereditary Aptitudes in a
Nation.

I HAVE just shown how the economic necessities
created by new circumstances have given rise to
the very formidable competition of the peoples of the

East, who from being consumers have become producers.

239

240 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

Gradually expelled from the Eastern markets, the peoples
of the West are reduced to quarrelling over the European
markets which remain open to them. What are the
qualities which will make for success in the struggles
which every day become more severe ? Will Socialism
give any advantage ? This we now propose to consider.

The aptitudes which have determined the superiority of
races have not been the same in all periods of history.
It is largely because a nation possesses certain aptitudes,
but cannot possess all, that we see, in the course of the
centuries, so many nations pass through all the stages of
greatness and decadence, according as the conditions of
the period render their characteristic qualities detrimental
or valuable.

For a long time the progress of civilisation demanded
certain special qualities : courage, a warlike spirit, a fine
language, ' literary and artistic tastes, which the Latin
nations possess in a high degree, and in consequence of
which they were long at the head of civilisation. To-
day these qualities have far less value than of old, and it
would even seem that some of them will soon have no
more scope. Industrial and commercial aptitudes, which
were formerly of secondary importance, are taking the first
rank with the present phase of the world's evolution. It
follows that the industrial and commercial nations are
coming to the front. The centres of civilisation are
about to be changed.

The consequences of these facts are very important.
As a nation is incapable of changing its aptitudes, it
must strive thoroughly to realise what they are, so as to
utilise them in the best possible manner, and not to
undertake futile struggles in regions where failure awaits
them. A man who might make an excellent musician, a
brilliant artist, will make a sorry man of business, a very
incapable manufacturer. For nations, as for individuals,

STRUGGLES BETWEEN WESTERN PEOPLES 241

the first condition of success in life is to know clearly of
what one is capable, and to undertake no task too great
for one's means.

Now the Latin nations, as the result of the hereditary
conceptions of which I have pointed out the origin,
possess only in a very small degree the aptitudes for
commerce, industry, and colonisation which are to-day
so necessary. They are warriors, tillers of the land,
artists, inventors ; they are not manufacturers, business
men, nor, above all, colonists.

SHght though the commercial, industrial, and colo-
nising abilities of the Latin races may be, they were,
nevertheless, sufficient at a time when there was little or
no competition between the nations. To-day they are
not sufficient. People are always speaking of the in-
dustrial and commercial decadence of our race. The
assertion is not absolutely exact, since our industry and
our commerce are far superior to what they were fifty
years ago. One ought to say insufficient progress, not
decadence. But the word decadence is perfectly just if
we understand by that expression that the Latin nations,
progressing far less rapidly than their rivals, will soon
infallibly be supplanted by them.

The symptoms of this falling behind are clearly to be
seen in all the Latin peoples, which proves that we are
considering a racial phenomenon. Spain seems to have
reached the last limit of this increasing inferiority, and it
would seem that Italy must soon keep her company.
France is still struggling, but the signs of her failure are
becoming clearer every day.

2. The Industrial and Commercial Situation of
THE Latin Peoples.

In the following investigation we shall concern our-
selves only with France ; for the other Latin peoples we

17

242 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

have only to repeat, with greater emphasis, that which
applies to France. She is the least extinct of the Latin
nations, but none the less her commercial and industrial
situation is very far indeed from brilliant.

The facts which demonstrate our commercial and
, industrial weakness are to-day too evident to be con-
tested. All the reports of our consuls or deputies who
have been charged with the investigation of the question
are unanimous, and repeat one another in almost the
same words.

This is how M. d'Estournelles expresses himself in a
recent publication : —

" M. Charles Roux has given us a resumi of all the
regrettable things observed in an already long experience,
in a report on the decadence of our commerce. He
might have written the same things of our navy or of
our colonies. France compromises or neglects her
resources through apathy, routine, and attachment to
rules of thumb, of which a great number date from
Colbert or Richelieu. Like all victims of apathy, she is
energetic by fits and starts, and becomes heroic ; but she
also has fits of madness, of sentimental reform, under-
taken without forethought, and often worse than the evil
they are destined to cure. When, for instance, she
ceases to exploit her colonies, it is to assimilate them to
the mother country from one day to the next, to make
French departments of them, and to ruin them. Or she
will suddenly decide, vvithout a shadow of motive, and
in spite of the natural and insurmountable difficulties in
the way, that all the native Jews of Algeria shall be
French electors, and consequently masters of the Arab
population, and of our colonists themselves. Or, again,
thanks to our ignorance, she will ingenuously organise in
the colonies a parody, a caricature of universal suffrage ;
gives the right of voting on our Budget, and on matters

STRUGGLES BETWEEN WESTERN PEOPLES 243

of peace and war, to the representatives of natives,
Indian or Senegalese, who do not pay our taxes,
do not serve in our army, and do not speak our
language."

M. Depasse, in a judicious article, gives the causes of
this state of things, which are almost identical with those
I have already indicated : —

" France was not born a commercial nation ; she is an
artist, a warrior, a revolutionary. It is her glory that she
has an ideal raised far above the practical details of
commerce, but as wars and revolutions are less and less
in fashion she becomes less and less able to respond to
the ideal of modern nations, and art itself is suffering
profound modifications, since it has to address itself to
mobs, and not only to an elite.

"All that for centuries has made the superiority of
France has lost its value ; another civilisation is preparing
itself, which will, we may be sure, have its own splen-
dours ; but France would seem all the less disposed to
enter into it with all her heart and all her genius, in that
she has shone with a greater splendour and received
more advantages and profit in the old civilisation of
which she was the mistress. France is far advanced in
the matter of political liberties ; but politics also have lost
their value ; she is falling back into the second rank in
the estimation of the woi-ld and the requirements of the
nations. France is lettered and eloquent ; it has been
her character for two thousand years. But the eloquence
of words is being supplanted by the eloquence of figures.
Thus on every hand this phenomenon is presented for
our consideration ; everything, or almost everything, that
for long centuries made the power, originality, grace, and
wealth of France, has lost its value in the world, and
seems to have been cast out of the current of the order
of things which is bearing modern humanity forward.

244 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

This is perhaps a fact not unworthy of the attention of
poHticians."

"The German peril ! " writes M. Schwob, "well, that is
just true ; but let us say also the British peril, the Australian
peril, the American peril, and even the Russian peril and
the Chinese peril. On the battlefield of modern industry
and commerce there is neither peace nor alliance.
Treaties are passed that are called commercial treaties,
but these treaties themselves have for their object war
without limit, without pity, more implacable than war at
the cannon's mouth, and all the more perilous in that
it victimises its millions without noise and without
smoke.

"Thus our political alliance with Russia, and our
reciprocal and unalterable friendship, do not prohibit
commercial conventions which are, for the moment,
entirely to the advantage of Germany, and to our hurt.
In the regions of economics, in the present state of
Europe and the world, there is no such thing as friend-
ship. A heartless war is being waged on every side."

Our consuls, who witness abroad the steady and rapid
decline of our commerce, make the same complaints,
despite the reserve imposed on them by their official
position. All give the same warnings, which, however,
are quite futile. They reproach our manufacturers and
commercial men for their apathy, their carelessness,
their lack of initiative, their helplessness in changing old
processes for new, and in adapting the formalities of
every kind with which they surround the slightest actions
to the new requirements of their customers ; in a word,
they reproach them with their want of commercial
intelligence.

Innumerable examples could be given. I will confine
myself to the following, since they are highly typical : —

"Our manufacturers, and even the largest of them,"

STRUGGLES BETWEEN WESTERN PEOPLES 245

writes the correspondent of the Temps in the Transvaal,
"are distrustful busybodies, unwilling to exert them-
selves, and cheerfully exchanging a lengthy cor-
respondence on matters that their English or German
competitors would settle in a few days.

" The English and German engineers have on the spot
the current prices, in fullest detail, of every sort of
machinery used in the mining industry, and when a
tender or an estimate is invited they are able to deliver
it within the short limit of five or seven days which is
usually allowed. Our French engineers, who have not
the same data, thanks to the inertia of their employers,
have to abstain from competing, as the six weeks
necessary for a messenger to reach and return from
France render it impossible. . . . The Enghsh and
Germans have complied with the demands which were
made of them."

There are many analogous facts.

" A year ago," we read in the Jotirnal, " a merchant of
South America wished to export some American lamb-
skins to France and Germany. He was put in com-
munication, for this purpose, thanks to the officious care
of our consul and our minister of commerce, with one of
our commission agents. The American merchant then
despatched a consignment of twenty thousand skins to
the French house, and, simultaneously, an equal consign-
ment to a German house in Hamburg, with whom he had
an understanding. A year went by ; the two houses sent
in the accounts of the sales. The French house had ex-
perienced so many difficulties in selling the merchandise,
and was obliged to consent to such low prices, that the
operation resulted in a loss of 10 per cent, on the part of
the exporter. The German house, more active and more
competent, had realised on the same goods a profit of
12 per cent. And the characteristic part of the affair is

246 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

this : that it was in France precisely that it was able to
place the goods. All commentary would be super-
fluous."

I have often been able to verify for myself the pro-
found apathy, the horror of effort, and all the rest of the
faults denoted by ouv foreign consuls. These faults,
which are every day becoming more accentuated, appear
still more striking when, after an interval of ten years,
one renews acquaintance with the representatives of a
formerly prosperous or semi-prosperous industry.

When I resumed some laboratory experiments with
regard to invisible light rays, which I had put aside
for several years, I was struck with the deep-rooted
decadence both of the personnel and the plant of our
manufacturers, a decadence of which I had nevertheless
been informed from several quarters, and which, more-
over, I had predicted in a chapter of my book Man
and Society, published eighteen years ago. In one
week several different firms refused to sell me certain
instruments, representing a total value of more than
£20, simply because the delivery would have caused
a very slight inconvenience to the vendors. In the first
case I had ordered an electric lamp. Before buying it
I wrote to the maker to ask him if he would first let me
see it working. As I did not even obtain a reply, I got
one of his friends to inquii-e the reason of his silence.
" It would be too much bother to sell under such con-
ditions," he was told. In the second case I wanted a
water-level to be fixed to a metallic part of a large
apparatus. The dealer, although the director of one of
the largest manufacturing photographic concerns in
Paris, had not a single workman capable of executing
the job. Thirdly, I wanted two supplementary contacts
fitted to a galvanometer, a task which might require half
an hour. The maker had the necessary workmen at

STRUGGLES BETWEEN WESTERN PEOPLES 247

hand : " but," he told me, " my partner would be dis-
pleased if I were to upset the staff for an order
amounting to less than ;^8."

Not such are the methods of the German manu-
facturers. A short time after the preceding incon-
veniences, I was in need of a little laminated cobalt,
which is not a particularly rare metal. I wrote to the
principal manufacturing chemists in Paris. As the order
was not an important one they did not even take the
trouble to reply. One firm alone wrote to tell me that
they could perhaps let me have the cobalt in the course
of a few weeks. Having waited for three months, and
being in urgent need of the metal, I wrote to a firm in
Berlin. Although this time the order was only of a few
francs, I received a reply by return of post, and the
cobalt, worked up into the required dimensions, was
delivered at the end of a week.

It is always the same with German firms. The most
insignificant order is received with respect, and all
modifications demanded by the purchaser are rapidly
executed. The consequence is that German firms are
springing up in Paris every day, and the public is obliged
to have recourse to them, despite its patriotic reluctance.
You go to one for an insignificant purchase, and soon
you go nowhere else. I could mention several large
official scientific establishments, which, on account of
inconveniences such as I myself have experienced,
have come to placing their orders almost exclusively in
Germany.

The commercial incapacity -of the- Latins unhappily
finds proof in every branch of industry. Compare, for
example, the Swiss hotels, so attractive to the foreigner,
with the wretched and inconvenient inns which we find
in the most picturesque situations in France and Spain.
After this comparison, how can we wonder that these

248 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

places are so little visited ? According to the official
statistics, the receipts of the Swiss hotels amount to
;^4,6oo,ooo, yielding their proprietors ^^i, 240,000 profit,
a truly enormous sum for a little country whose annual
receipts hardly amount to ;^3,ooo,ooo. For the Swiss
their hotels are veritable gold mines, rivalling the richest
of Africa.

" How much longer will it be," asks M. Georges
Michel, who cites these figures in the Economiste
Frangais, "before our colonies, on which we have
thrown away so many millions, will yield us a hundredth
part of the amount that Switzerland, who has neither
colonies, nor gold mines, nor silver mines, is able to
levy on the stranger ? "

Young Frenchmen to-day are always being told to go
as colonists to foreign countries. Would it not be far
wiser and far more productive to counsel them to
attempt, first of all, to colonise their own country ?
Since we do not know how to utilise the natural wealth
under our hands, how can we hope to surmount the
far greater difficulties which we should encounter in
foreign countries ?

Our manufacturers and men of business are perfectly
aware of all this, but their apathy is too great to permit
of their being affected by it. I have had occasion to
lecture several on the subject. I cannot remember to
have convinced a single one of the necessity of adopting
new methods. The one dream of one and all is to
gain money without exertion, without risk, and without
work.

"The French," writes one of the authors I have just
quoted, " will be lucky henceforth if they are able to make
a little honest and sure profit, without speculation, and if
they end, in good years and in bad years, in making the
two ends meet, like Lafontaine's cobbler. But they will

STRUGGLES BETWEEN WESTERN PEOPLES 249

end by being unable to make them meet, the two ends of
their very honest Httle thread. They must put away a
httle sum at once ; yes at once . . . And when this is
put away it comes forth no more ; this modest profit
must not be risked in new ventures ! Above all, they
will take good care not to renew their machinery, not
to reform their methods of production. Don't speak to
me of reforms ! They will go on thus as long as they
are able, but that will not be for ever ; and the most
competent of men, and the most moderate in their judg-
ments, tell us that the end has come, or very nearly."

It has, in fact, come. We are living on the shadow
of the past, on the shadow of a shadow, and ruin is
approaching with a rapidity which amazes all the
statisticians. Our exports, which, twenty years ago,
were far greater than those of England, are now far
less. As has justly been said, our commercial losses are
such to-day that we are paying every three or four years
the war indemnity which we thought to have paid once
for all.

The total ruin of our exterior commerce is saved by
our monopoly of certain natural products, such as wines
of superior quality, which almost alone of all others we
possess, and the export trade in a few articles of luxury,
such as fashions, silks, artificial flowers, perfumery,
jewellery, and so forth, in respect of which our artistic
ability is not yet extinct ; but in all else there is a rapid
downfall.

Our mercantile marine has naturally partaken of this
decadence. It remains where it was, while all the other
nations are increasing theirs in enormous proportions.
Germany has almost doubled hers in ten years. England
has increased hers by a third. We are gradually falling
from the first rank to the last. While the tonnage of the
port of Hamburg has increased tenfold in twenty-five

250 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

years, the decadence of the ports of Havre and Marseilles
is more evident every year. Strangers are trading for us on
our own territory. Of the 16,000,000 tons French which
represent our annual maritime commerce with other
countries 4,000,000 tons are carried by French vessels,
and the rest, that is to say, three-quarters, by foreign
vessels. And, nevertheless, these foreign vessels touch
none of the ;£44o,ooo of subsidies which the Government
is obliged to pay annually to our commercial marine to
save it from the total ruin which its incapacity and lack
of foresight would otherwise render inevitable.

Can we save ourselves by trading with our colonies ?
Alas, no ! They refuse to accept ours, preferring English
and German products. These colonies of ours, which
cost us so many millions to conquer, are good for
nothing but markets for the commercial houses of
London, Bremen, Hamburg, Berlin, and so forth.
Never have our traders understood that an Arab, a
Chinese, a Kanaka, or a negro, may have different tastes
from a Frenchman. This inability to represent to one-
self ideas other than one's own is, as I have already
shown, altogether characteristic of the Latins.

We are unable to establish a trade even with those
colonies that are at our doors. One of our journals
recently published the following reflections on the
commercial relations of France and the R6gence of
Tunis :—

" Sugars come from England, Austria, and Germany ;
alcohol from Austria ; spun cotton chiefly from England,
and to a smaller extent from Austria ; cotton, flaxen,
hempen, and woollen fabrics from England ; silken
fabrics from India and from Germany ; shirts from
England and Austria ; wood from America ; candles
from England and Holland ; papers from England and
Austria ; cutlery from England ; glass from Austria ;

STRUGGLES BETWEEN WESTERN PEOPLES 251

bottles from England ; clocks and watches from Ger-
many or Switzerland ; toys from Germany ; chemical
products from England ; petroleum from Russia . . .

" And from France ? From France there come always
soldiers and officials."

And, nevertheless, they cost us terribly dear in men
and in money, our too useless colonies. In his report on
the Budget for 1897, M. Siegfried, a deputy, has justly
called attention to the fact that all the English colonies,
with their superficies of 15,000,000 square miles and
their 393,000,000 inhabitants, cost the meti-opolis only
;^2,48o,ooo, while ours, with less than 3,000,000 square
miles of superficies and 32,000,000 inhabitants, cost us
;£2,96o,ooo. Now, although far less populated and far
less in extent than the English colonies, they cost more
than the latter. Moreover, it is not for the glory of
possessing these colonies that the English pay their
money. These two and a half millions are merely an
advance which is paid over and over again by the
commerce of the colonies with the metropolis. The sole
products which the Latins have hitherto exported to
their colonies are huge battalions of officials, and a small
quantity oi a few articles of luxury, which are almost
exclusively consumed by these officials themselves. The
definitive Budget of our colonies is very lucid. They
cost us ;^2,96o,ooo annually and bring us in about
^280,000. Here is an absolutely deplorable operation,
which is accomplished to the great stupefaction of the
nations which watch us persist in the practice. Suppos-
ing that these colonies were ruled by colonising
countries such as England or Holland, it is certain that
matters would be reversed. They would cost the mother •
country ;^28o,ooo, and bring her in ;£3,ooo,ooo ; besides
which they would quickly be covered, like all the
English colonies, with telegraphs and railways due to

252 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

private enterprise, and costing the metropolis nothing.
We know that the network of 30,000 miles of railways
with which India is covered has not cost the English
Government a penny.

To the many causes of our national decadence we
must unhappily add the unscrupulous procedure of many
of our commercial houses, procedures that those who
have travelled abroad know only too well. I remember
that when I was in the East I was struck by seeing on
all the bottles of Bordeaux and cognac a little label in
English, indicating that the bottle had been filled by a
London house, which guaranteed the purity of the
product. On inquiry I learned that the great houses of
Bordeaux and Cognac had for a long time sold liquors
of such inferior quality to the English merchants estab-
lished abroad that the latter had entirely abandoned the
practice of applying to them directly, preferring to obtain
their goods through English houses buying the liquors
on the spot. This fact will not surprise those who are
informed of the value of the articles that our merchants
qualify as articles for exportation.

This decline in quality of our products is to be ob-
served not only in those which are destined for exporta-
tion, but is more and more affecting those which are sold
at home, a fact which explains the crushing success of
foreign competition. Let us take a sufficiently definite
example ; for instance, photographic objectives, which
to-day form a by no means inconsiderable item of
commerce. Any photographer will tell you that the
English, and especially the German objective, although
two or three times as expensive as the French article,
has almost entirely driven the latter from the market.
And why ? Simply because the foreign lenses of makers
of repute are without exception good, and ours are
only good exceptionally. The foreign maker, under-

STRUGGLES BETWEEN WESTERN PEOPLES 253

standing that it is in his interest not to depreciate his
name, does not put failures on the market. The French
maker has not yet arrived at such a lofty conception.
All that he has made, whether good or bad, must be got
rid of, until finally he gets rid of nothing at all.' The
same is true of a host of products ; photographic plates,
for example. Take the best French brands, and in every
box you will invariably find one or two bad plates,
coated with unsuccessful emulsions, which the maker has
slipped in among the good batches, being unable to resign
himself to rejecting them. There is nothing of the kind
with foreign plates. The English or German maker, pos-
sibly, is not more honest than the French maker, but he
is far more intelligent in understanding what his interests
are. The inevitable conclusion is that in a few years,
despite all the protective tariffs imaginable, despite all
the outcries of our makers, and by the mere force of
things, the foreign plate will supplant the French plate
just as the foreign objective has supplanted the French
objective.

The relaxed honesty of our merchants is a very serious
symptom, and one, unhappily, which is to be observed in
every industry, and is on the increase. It is quite in
vain that measures upon measures are passed to put a
check on fraud in all the branches of commerce. In
Paris, for example, the police have almost given up
seizing fuel sold in sacks which are sealed with a pre-
tended guarantee of weight. Invariably the weight is 25
per cent, less than that indicated, and the courts would
not be sufficient to condemn all the offenders. In one

' In a catalogue of articles de voyage of the Louvre stores'
published in June, 1898, of the four kinds of photographic objectives
offered for sale three are German and only one French, and this
only in connection with a cheap outfit. The French objective is
almost unsaleable to-day, while thirty years ago it was the German
objective that was unsaleable.

254 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

case a delivery of 26 tons of coal was over 6 tons short
The employes of the large dealer who committed the
fraud must have known that such things were a daily
practice. In other similar affairs it was proved that the
merchant used to steal a quarter of the coal delivered,
and the carters another quarter.

And, unhappily, such practices are becoming more and
more general, even in the transactions of educated men.
In a report pubhshed in the Officiel for December 23,
1896, summing up the analyses made by the municipal
laboratory over a period of three years of products ,
procured from the chemists' shops, the writer says,
" that the proportion of products or preparations above
all reproach amounts hardly to one-fourth."

3. Causes of the Commercial and Industrial
Superiority of the Germans.

The industrial and commercial superiority of the
English, and more especially of the Germans, is so
evident to-day that it would be puerile to seek to deny it.
And the Germans know perfectly well what to make of
this point. This is how one ,of their writers expresses
himself in a recent publication : —

" Nowadays it is we who export to Paris the Parisian
article! How the times are changed 1 And how our
parts are changed 1 . . .

" For excavations, for road-work, for hard and ill-
paid callings, France must have Italians. For manu-
factures, for banking, for commerce in "general, she must
have Germans, Belgians, or Swiss. . . . ■

" The French workmen out of work are to be num-
bered by tens of thousands ; and yet, and this is a very
significant fact, the German who goes to Paris does not
have to keep his hands in his pockets long. How many

STRUGGLES BETWEEN WESTERN PEOPLES 255

have we not seen set out for France ! and all, without
exception, have found work there.

"Among our neighbours to send a son abroad is the
height of luxury, which only a few rich families allow
themselves. How many French employes will you find
in Germany, or in England ? How many with no other
means of subsistence than their salary ? For Germany
the list is soon reckoned up — perhaps there are a
dozen.

" Every year France makes way for such and such a
nation in the matter of such and such an article. From
the third rank she falls back to the fourth, from the
fourth to the fifth, without ever regaining her lost ground.
The table of the various exports of the "vvhole world for
the last ten years presents a striking spectacle ; it is like
watching a race in which France, exhausted and ill-
mounted, is letting, one by one, all her competitors
outstrip her. . . .

"When a growing nation begins to elbow a more
sparsely populated nation, which consequently forms a
centre of depression, a current of air is set up, which is
vulgarly called an invasion, during which phenomenon
the civil code is laid aside. . . . The sparsely peopled
nations must pull in their elbows." '

Referring to this writer M. Arthur Maillet says : —

" This German has written phrases which continually
haunt my mind. He has predicted that France will
become a species of colony, which will be administered

' The young intelleduels to whom I have alluded in a pre-
vious chapter, apropos of a quotation from Lemaitre referring to
their utter lack of patriotism, vifould do well to meditate seriously on
the last few lines of this quotation. With a little more intellectuality
they would eventually understand that they can only conserve the
faculty of cultivating in peace the ego that is so dear to them by
scorning their country a little less, and respecting the army which
alone can defend it a great deal more.

256 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

by French functionaries and supported by German
manufacturers, merchants, and agriculturists. The first
time I read this prediction, some three or four years
ago, it seemed to me a mere insult. But on looking
into the matter I was able to see that it was already
more than three parts realised. If you doubt that it is so,
ask those who are experienced in these matters what
would become of the French industries and of French
commerce if all foreigners were suddenly obliged to
leave France. How many new companies are formed of
which they are not the promoters, and of which they do
not hold all the shares ? "

Let us try to discover the causes which have given the
Germans such an industrial and commercial superiority
in less than twenty-five years.

We will first of all set aside the reason, so often given,
that their commercial success is facilitated by the prestige
of their victories. This prestige has absolutely nothing
to do with the matter. The fact is that the buyer is
interested solely in the merchandise which is delivered to
him, and nothing at all about the nationality of the
vendor. Commerce is an individual, not a national
matter. All nations are equally free to trade with the
English colonies, and if the natives and colonists have
long preferred English goods it is because they are
better, cheaper, and more to their taste. If they are now
beginning to prefer German goods it is evidently because
the latter appear to have greater advantages. If then
German commerce is steadily invading the world, it is
not because the Germans have a large army, but simply
because buyers prefer German merchandise. Military
successes have nothing to do with this preference. The
most that can be said of the influence of the German
military system is that the young man who has been
subjected to it has acquired habits of order, punctuality,

STRUGGLES BETWEEN WESTERN PEOPLES 257

duty, and discipline which will be of great value to him
later on in commerce.

This first reason being eliminated, we must seek for
others.

In the first rank, as always, appear racial character-
istics. But before insisting on these we must first of all
remark that the power of the Germans consists not only
in their own proper strength, but also in our weakness.

When treating of the formative conceptions of the
Latin mind, I denoted the causes of this weakness. My
readers know how the aptitudes of the Latin peoples
have been created by their past, and to what extent these
peoples are to-day suffering from the effects of that past.
They know what has been the result of our long-con-
tinued centralisation, of our progressive State absorp-
tion, which destroys all individual enterprise, and leaves
the citizen incapable of doing anything for himself
when he is deprived of guidance. They are familiar
also with the terrible effect of a system of education
which despoils the growing mind of the few vestiges of
independence and will which have been left it by
heredity, casts them into the midst of life without any
knowledge other than words, and perverts their judg-
ment for ever.

And to show to what extent the strength of the
Germans consists in our own weakness, it will suffice to
point out the fact that it is precisely our manufacturers
and our merchants and our shopkeepers who are the
pioneers of German products in France. This escapes the
statistician, but it reveals a state of mind which I believe
to be far more serious than the apathy, the suspicious
and petty dispositions, and the lack of initiative with
which our consuls reproach our commercial men. Not
only are they steadily renouncing all effort and all idea
of opposition, but they have begun to furnish our rivals

18

2S8 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

with arms, by selling more and more exclusively the pro-
ducts of those rivals. In many industries we find that
our some-time manufacturers have become simple com-
mission agents, confining themselves to selling, at a large
profit, articles which they have imported from Germany,
and on which they have put their own names. It is thus
that in less than twenty years the industries in which
France was formerly in the first rank, such as the manu-
facture of photographic apparatus, chemical products,
instruments of precision, and even articles de Paris,
have passed almost entirely into the hands of foreigners.
To get the simplest scientific instrument made in Paris is
to-day a matter of considerable difficulty. The difficulty
will be insurmountable when the few old makers who
are still alive have disappeared.

Evidently it appears far simpler to sell a made article
than to make it oneself. It is perhaps a less simple
matter to foresee the consequences of this operation.
Yet they are sufficiently obvious.

The German maker, who delivers to his Parisian com-
petitor an article which the latter is the reputed maker,
and on which he often realises a considerable profit,
presently sees that it is to his advantage to sell the same
article directly to the Parisian public in his own name.
He commences first of all by selling, to several com-
mission agents, the same article, but with his name
engraved on it. This makes it impossible for the
Frenchman to sell it under his own name, and at the
same time suppresses his profit. Encouraged by his
success, the German maker presently decides to open a
shop in Paris, at which his manufactures shall be sold
under his own name.^

" And often a factory as well. There are at present three German
houses in Paris selling objectives. One of them has installed in the
heart of Paris a workshop for the manufacture of these objectives,

STRUGGLES BETWEEN WESTERN PEOPLES 259

Unhappily the manufactures of photographic neces-
sities, instruments of precision, and chemical products
are not the only ones that have passed into foreign hands.
The articles de Paris sold by our great tailors and
dressmakers are more and more German. Stuffs for
men's clothes come in increasing proportions from
England and Germany, and are more and more fre-
quently made up by foreign tailors, who are now setting
up their shops in every quarter of Paris. Foreigners are
setting up in Paris as booksellers, art dealers, jewellers,
and so on, and are now beginning to undertake trade in
silks and ladies' clothing. If the jury had advised the
elimination from the forthcoming Exhibition of 1900
all articles of foreign origin sold under a French name,
our part in the Exhibition would have been a very poor
one.i

It would, perhaps, be unjust to throw too many stones
at our manufacturers, and to attribute exclusively to
their incapacity and idleness what is in some part the
effect of other causes. It is, indeed, very evident that
the increasing demands of the workers, which are
favoured by the bounty of the public authorities, together
with the enormous taxes which are crushing our
industries, contribute as much as the imperfection and
insufficiency of our tools and the increase in the cost
of production to the impossibility of struggling against

which employs 150 men, all of them, naturally, from Germany, and
which can hardly keep up with the orders of its French customers.
When our men of business and our manufacturers complain of
suffering from foreign competition, should they not be told that it is
from their incapacity and their apathy that they are really suffer-
ing ? The Germans will soon regard Paris as the most productive
of their colonies.

• As a member of the jury of admission for scientific instruments
I had thought of proposing this elimination, but I had to abandon
the idea, as it would have aroused too much protest on the part of
the exhibitors,

26o THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

our competitors. It is easy to understand that the
manufacturer, harassed and annoyed, should finish by
giving up the manufacture of articles that he can buy
cheaper than he can make. He accordingly closes his
workshop and descends to the role of simple retailer. If
he had different hereditary aptitudes he would doubtless
do as his English and American brothers, who are also
affected by the demands of their workers and by com-
petition, but who, thanks to their energy, and the daily
increasing perfection of their plant, are able to compete
without too great disadvantage with their German rivals.
Unfortunately for our manufacturers, they have none of
the qualities which make for success in such a conflict.
At the bottom of all our social questions lies always this
dominant question of race, which is indeed the supreme
arbiter of the destinies of nations. All the facts enume-
rated in this chapter are contemporary, but how remote
are their causes !

The system of centralisation to which the Germans
have been subjected for some time past will one day,
doubtless, as I have elsewhere remarked, conduct them
to the pass in which we find ourselves to-day ; but in the
meantime they are benefiting by quahties created by
their past, qualities which, though not brilliant, are solid,
and are in entire agreement with the new conditions and
new necessities created by the evolution of the sciences,
industry, and commerce.

What has been said in the preceding paragraph of their
industrial and commercial success will already enable us
to foresee the causes of this success. We shall under-
stand them still better by considering their national
qualities, and what they gain by them.

The principal qualities of the Germans are patience,
perseverance, the habits of observation and reflection,
and a great aptitude for co-operation. All these quahties

STRUGGLES BETWEEN WESTERN PEOPLES 261

are very highly developed by a marvellous technical
education.!

These are the most general and at once the most funda-
mental causes of their success. Commercially and in-
dustrially they result in the constant perfection of
industrial implements and products,^ the manufacture of
goods in accordance with the taste of the customer, and
constant modifications according to his requirements,
extreme punctuality in delivery, and the sending out into
the entire vi^orld of intelligent representatives acquainted
with the language and the customs of the various
countries they visit, and the means and cost of carriage.
A number of commercial societies constantly furnish
their associates, by means of numerous agents sent to
all quarters of the globe, with the most precise infor-
mation. The Export Verein of Dresden spent between
1885 and 1895 nearly ^^20,000 in sending out travelling
correspondents. The German Colonial Society possesses
an annual revenue of ;^4,8oo, furnished by the subscrip-
tions of its members, and has 1,051 representatives

' A manufacturer was recently speaking to me of the astonishment
which he had felt on visiting a large electrical shop in Germany at
the number of foremen and simple workmen whom he heard
addressed as Doctor or Engineer. The Germans do not suffer as we
do from a plethora of unemployed graduates, for the reason that,
their technical education being extremely thorough, they are easily
able to avail themselves of it in industry, while the purely theoretical
education of the Latins fits them only to become professors, magis-
trates, or officials.

' Certain German factories have been cited as possessmg as many
as twenty-four chemists, of whom several are employed only in
theoretical research, which is immediately put into practice by others,
who try to extract therefrom a new industrial application. The
German manufacturers are up to date in respect of all new inven-
tions, and immediately try to perfect them. A few days after the
publication of details of wireless telegraphy, a Berlin house was
making the complete apparatus, the Morse recorder included, for
;£io. I had the instrument under my hands, and I can vouch that
the extreme difficulties of adjustment had been admirably sur-
mounted.

262 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

abroad. The union of commercial employes which has
its headquarters at Hamburg, has 42,000 members, and
places a thousand employes a year.

Most of the merchandise destined for exportation leaves
by the port of Hamburg, whose commerce has increased
tenfold since 1871, and which now surpasses Liverpool
in the matter of tonnage, while Havre and Marseilles
are declining from year to year. In Hamburg there are
numbers of export agents who represent the interests of
the manufacturers, and put them in relation with buyers.
They have in their warehouses samples of every kind of
goods, of which the form and nature are incessantly being
modified by the makers, in accordance with information
received from the most distant quarters of the globe.

Th€ results obtained by these associations are prompt
and valuable, In a report for 1894 an American consul,
Mr. Monaghan, gave as an example the business done in
Bosnia by the Sofia branch of one of the societies I have
been speaking of. After taking the trouble to get up a
catalogue in Bulgarian, and sending out nearly 200,000
letters or prospectuses, besides spending nearly .£4,000 on
commercial travellers, it received orders, after the first
year, to the amount of ;£4oo,ooo, and at the same time
immensely reduced the trade of all its competitors.

Such results cannot be obtained without trouble ; but
the German never shrinks from exertion. Unlike the
French manufacturer, he studies with the greatest care
the tastes, habits, manners, and, in a word, the psychology^
of his clients, and the information published annually by
the societies I have mentioned contains the most precise
information on these subjects. M. Delines, reviewing a
report of Professor Yanjoul, has shown how minutely the
German investigators study the psychology of the nations
with whom their merchants are about to do business.
Speaking of the Russians, for example, the German indi-

STRUGGLES BETWEEN WESTSKN PEOPLES 263

cates their tastes, speaks of the necessity of taking tea with
them before discussing business, then mentions the goods
it is possible to sell them, and specifies the most useful of
these, from a commercial point of view, with the words
" sale absolutely good." In the Export-Hand-Addressbuch,
which is in the hands of every German merchant, we
find characteristic notes of the following kind : —

" The Chinese usually prepare their food in very thin
iron utensils ; the rice is quickly cooked, but the sauce-
pan is soon burnt and has to be frequently renewed. An
English house, wishing to beat all its competitors, sent
out a consignment of iron pots which were thicker, more
durable, and were sold at a lower price. The Chinese at
first took the bait, and the pots began to sell like wildfire.
But this did not last long. At the end of a few days the
sale suddenly stopped. The reason was a logical one ;
fuel is very dear in China, the English saucepans were
very thick, the rice cooked very slowly, and, in short, the
new pots turned out to be far less economical than the
old ones, in which the rice was cooked in no time. The
Chinese returned to their accustomed and more eco-
nomical utensils."

The same publication cites a still more amusing fact ; —

"A European merchant had the brilliant idea of ex-
porting to China a consignment of horseshoes bearing for
trademark a most effective and irresistible dragon. What
was his stupefaction to learn that the Chinese turned from
his goods with anger 1 He had not reflected that a
dragon figures on the national escutcheon of the Celestial
Empire, and that the Celestials would consider it sacrilege
to allow a horse to defile this august emblem with his
hoofs."

There is another story of an English merchant
who put some excellent needles on the Chinese market,
needles which ought to have defied all competition, and

264 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

then fell to vainly racking his brains to explain to himself
why they did not selh He did not know that in China
black is a symbol of sorrow, and always carries ill-luck ;
and these excellent English needles were done up in
sheaths of black paper, so that the Chinese preferred
inferior needles from other quarters, which were done up
in red or green.

If I enter into such details as these it is to show what
elements go to the making of the success of a nation
to-day. Taken separately, these details seem infinitesimal.
It is the sum of them that makes their importance, and
that importance is immense. The turn of mind which
allows a German seriously to preoccupy himself with the
way in which a Chinaman cooks his rice may seem very
contemptible to a Frenchman, whose mind is taken up
with such high matters as the revision of the constitution,
the separation of Church and State, the utility of learning
Greek, and so forth ; but nevertheless the Latins have got
to understand that their part in the world will soon be
terminated, and that they will utterly disappear from
history, if they do not become resigned to abandon their
useless theoretical discussions, their futile and sentimental
phraseology, in order to busy themselves about these petty
practical questions on which the lives of nations to-day
depend. No Government can give them what they lack.
They must seek help in themselves, not from outside.

Is it to be thought that the application of SociaHstic
doctrines would remedy the state of things set forth in
this chapter ? Would a Socialist society, even more
formalistic than ours, be the one to develop that spirit of
enterprise and that energy which are so necessary to-day,
and which the Latins lack so greatly ? When the Col-
lectivist State directs everything, makes everything, will
products be better and less costly, their exportation easier,
and foreign competition less to be feared ? To believe it

STRUGGLES BETWEEN WESTERN PEOPLES 265

one would have to ignore the universal laws of industry
and commerce. If decadence is far advanced among the
Latin nations, it is precisely because State Socialism has
for a long time been making immense progress among
them, and because they are incapable of undertaking any-
thing whatever without continual assistance from the
Government. We have only to make the Socialist
conquest more complete still further to accentuate this
decadence.

CHAPTER IV

ECONOMIC NECESSITIES AND THE GROWTH OF
POPULATIONS

I. The present development of the population of the various nations and its
causes : — Real complexity and apparent simplicity of social problems
— The population problem — The advantages and disadvantages of an
increasing population, accoi"ding to the country in which such increase
occurs — Psychological errors of the statisticians — The more largely
populated nations are more dangerous on account of their industries
and their commerce than on account of their cannon — Cause of the
decrease in population of certain countries — Why this diminution tends
to become general in all countries — The influence of comfort and fore-
sight, 2. The consequences of the increase or decrease of the population
in various countries : — The small part played by numbers in history
ancient and modern — The sources of a country's strength are agri-
culture, industry, and commerce, not in the number of its soldiers —
The dangers to France of an increased population — Why the excessive
population of England and Germany is not inconvenient to those
countries — The conditions which make emigration advantageous to a
nation — The conditions under which it is harmful — The disasters pro-
duced in certain countries by the increase of population — ^The instance
of India — The difficulties which the modern development of economics
will presently create in too thickly populated nations — The small
population of France will very soon be advantageous to her.

I. The Present Development of the Population
OF the various Nations and its Causes.

SOCIAL phenomena are always deceptive; they always
appear very simple, and are in reality of an excessive
complexity. The remedies for all the ills we suffer seem
to be extremely easy of application, but when we seek
to apply them we immediately discover that the invisible

ECONOMIC NECESSITIES 267

necessities which hedge us round very narrowly limit the
sphere of our action. The collective life of a people is
formed of innumerable particles ; if we touch one of them
the action set up is speedily communicated to all the
the others. It is only by taking separately, one by one,
all the little problems which go to make up the great
social problem, that we come to comprehend the formid-
able complexity of the latter, and to see how chimerical
are the remedies which simple-minded people are pro-
posing every day.

We shall find fresh proof of the complexity of social
problems if we examine a question which is more than
others narrowly connected with the progress of Socialism.
I mean the question of the relations which exist between
the development of the population and the economic
necessities which we see growing up every day.

I have tried in the last chapters to present two funda-
mental points : the first, that the industrial and economic
evolution of the world is assuming a character which is
entirely different from that it assumed in bygone centuries ;
the second, that peoples in possession of certain special
aptitudes, which may in the past have been useless enough,
must, when these aptitudes become applicable, rise to a
high rank.

Now this economic evolution of the world, of which
we now perceive but the dawning, has coincided with
various circumstances which have in the greater number
of the nations provoked a rapid increase of their popula-
tion.

In the presence of modern economic necessities are we
to say that this increase of population presents advantages
or inconveniences ? The reply must vary according to
the state of the peoples in whom the phenomenon is
observed.

When a country possesses a great extent of territory

268 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

which is sparsely populated, such as Russia, the United
States, or England with her colonies, the increase of her
population presents evident advantages, or at least for a
certain time. Is it the same with countries which are
sufficiently populated, possess no colonies, or have no
reason to send their inhabitants to those that they have,
which are well off in the matter of agriculture, and very
badly off in matters of industries and external commerce ?
I think not ; on the contrary, it seems to me that such
a country will do very wisely in not seeking to increase
its population. Given the phase of economic evolution
which I have described, such abstention is its only means
of avoiding the deepest misery.

Such is not, as we know, the opinion of the statisticians.
Having discovered that the population of most of the
European countries is progressing very rapidly, while that
of France remains stationary, and even tends to decrease,
so that the births were 33 per thousand in 1800, 27 in
1840, 25 in 1880, and 20 in 1895, we find them filling the
journals with their lamentations, and complaining no less
at the meetings of the learned societies. The State —
always the State — must, according to them, intervene at
once. There are no extravagant measures — such as a tax
on all celibates and bounties to the fathers of large
families — that they will not propose, to remedy what they
regard as a disaster, and what we should — being given
the present state of our country — consider as a blessing,
and in any case as a necessity resulting from causes
beside which all the measures proposed are patently
puerile and ineffective.

For the rest, the only inconvenience that the statisti-
cians have been able to discover in this stationary condi-
tion of our population is that the Germans, having far
more children, will very soon have more conscripts, and
will then be able to invade France with ease. Even if

ECONOMIC NECESSITIES 269

we consider the matter only from this restricted point of
view, we need not hesitate to say that the danger which
is supposed to be hanging over our heads is slight enough.
The Germans threaten us far more with their industries
and their commerce than with their rifles, and we must
not forget that on the day when they shall be sufficiently
numerous to make a successful attempt at invasion, they
will be threatened in their turn by the 130,000,000 of
Russia at their backs, since the statisticians admit by
hypothesis that the most numerous peoples must invade
the less numerous.

It is very probable that by the time the Germans are
able to gather together such multitudes as will enable
them to invade a nation whose warlike aptitudes history
will not allow us to miscalculate, Europe will have re-
covered from the illusion that the strength of armies
depends on their numbers. Experience will by then
have proved, conformably with the judicious predictions
of the German general. Von der Goltz, that the hordes
of half-disciplined men, without real military education,
and without any possible power of resistance, of which
the armies of to-day are composed, will be quickly
destroyed by a small army of veteran professional
soldiers, as of old the millions of Xerxes and Darius
were annihilated by a handful of Greeks, disciplined
and inured to all exercises and all fatigues.

When we examine the causes of this progressive dimi-
nution of our population we see that it is partly the
consequence, almost universal in all ages, of the increased
sense of prudence which is born of comfort. Only those
that have possessions think of preserving them, and of
assuring resources to their descendants, whose number
they intentionally limit.

To this determining cause, the effects of which have
been observed at every period, and notably at the apogee

270 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

of the Roman civilisation, we must add causes that are
special to the present day, of which the chief ones are
the evolution of industry, which, on account of the per-
fection of machinery, is reducing the number of utilisable
workers, and the absence of the colonising spirit, which
restricts the extent of our outlets, and would leave us
overburdened by a surplus of population.

These data are not particular to France, but are to be
observed in countries inhabited by very different races.
The United States may assuredly be ranked with the most
prosperous of countries, and yet the statisticians, not with-
out stupefaction, have observed in them the same decreas-
ing increase of population as they deplore in France. The
present birth-rate for the States is 26 per thousand, hardly
higher than ours. In ten counties of the States it is even
lower than our own, since it varies from 16 to 22 per
thousand. There one can blame neither the obligatory
military service, which does not exist ; nor the sale of
alcohol, which is interdicted ; nor the law, for the testator
enjoys the completest liberty ; that is to say, the father
has only to restrict the number pf his children in order
to avoid the too great division of his fortune.

A similar depression of the birth-rate is to be observed
in Australia, where it has fallen from 40 per thousand to
20 in the last twenty years. All these facts clearly demon-
strate the weakness of the arguments of the statisticians in
explaining what they call the danger of our depopulation.
The same decreasing increase of population is to be
seen almost everywhere, even in countries where the birth-
rate has been momentarily highest.

In Germany the birth rate was 42 in 1875, and had
fallen to 36 twenty years later. In England it fell from
36 to 29 in the same time. These losses are greater than
those of France, since in the latter country the rate has
only fallen from 26 to 23 in the same time. The two

ECONOMIC NECESSITIES 271

nations are thus gradually losing their advance of us, and
they will very probably end by losing it altogether.

2. The Consequences of the Increase or Decrease
OF the Population in various Countries.

We see by the preceding that an abatement in the
increase of the population is tending to manifest itself in
all countries, and that our rivals will not in the future
threaten us by the mere fact of their numbers.

Let us suppose, however, that they will not lose their
present advantage over us, and consider whether the
increase of their population may prove to be a serious
danger for us.

It would certainly appear, to hear the lamentations
of the statisticians, whom the Economiste frangais justly
qualifies as "harebrained," and whose minds, in truth,
seem singularly limited, that the superiority of a nation
is made by its numbers. Now a rapid bird's-eye view of
history will show us, for example, in the persons of the
Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, that numbers played a
very small part in ancient times. Must it be repeated that
it was with 100,000 well-trained men that the Greeks
triumphed over the 3,000,000 of Xerxes, and that the
Romans never had more than 400,000 soldiers scattered
over an empire which, from the Ocean to the Euphrates,
was 3,000 miles long and 1,500 broad ?

And without referring to these remote epochs, can we
say that number has played any larger a part in modern
times than it did in antiquity ? Nothing authorises us to
think so. Without speaking of the Chinese, who do not,
despite their 400 millions of men, seem to be very formid-
able from a military point of view, we know that the
English are able to keep 250 millions of Hindoos under
the yoke with an army of 65,000 men, and that Holland

272 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

rules her 40 millions of Asiatic subjects with a far smaller
army. Does Germany consider herself to be seriously
threatened because she has at her doors an immense
civilised empire with a population three times greater
than her own ?

Let us leave these puerile fears aside, then, and re-
member that what does in reality menace us is not the
number of our rivals, but their industrial and commercial
capacity and enterprise. The three real sources of
national strength are agriculture, industry, and com-
merce ; not armies.

It is, happily, not to be supposed that all the lamenta-
tions of the statisticians have resulted in increasing by a
single individual the number of the inhabitants of our
country. Let us congratulate ourselves on the complete
futility of their discourses. For suppose that an offended
Deity wished to heap upon France the most horrible of
calamities, of what would He make His choice ? War,
plague, or cholera ? None of these, for these are but
ephemeral ills. He would only have to double the figure
of our population. This, given the present economic
conditions of the world, and the needs and psychology
of the French people, would be an irremediable disaster.
After a brief delay we should witness bloody revolution,
hopeless misery, the assured triumph of Socialism, fol-
lowed by permanent unending wars and no less incessant
invasions.

But why has not the excess of population such incon-
venience in other countries, such as England and
Germany ? Simply, on the one hand, because these
countries possess colonies into which their surplus
population is poured ; and, on the other hand, because
emigration, so completely antipathetic to the French, is
with them regarded as a highly desirable thing, even
when it does not constitute an absolute necessity.

ECONOMIC NECESSITIES 273

It is the taste for emigration, and the possibiUty of
satisfying it, that allows a nation to increase the figure of
its population to any considerable extent. A consequence
at first of excessive population, the tendency to emigrate
becomes a cause in its turn, and contributes yet more to
increase this excess. The celebrated explorer Stanley
has presented this point very well in a letter recently
published by a journal in reply to a question which had
been addressed to him. He called attention to the fact
that emigration begins only when the population begins
to exceed a certain number to the square mile. Great
Britain had 130 inhabitants to the square mile in 1801 ;
as soon as this figure rose to 224, which was in 1841, a
movement of emigration began which rapidly increased.
When the population of Germany attained the same
density of 224 to the square mile, she in turn was obliged
to look about for colonies.^ Italy, on account of the
extreme sobriety of her inhabitants, was able to wait a
little longer, but when finally her population reached the
figure of 253 to the square mile, she, too, had to submit
to the common law, and seek for outlets. She has suc-
ceeded but ill in the attempt (always so difficult to the
Latin races), and has expended _^8,ooo,ooo in Africa, only
to end in humiliating defeat. But on pain of inevitable
ruin, towards which she is rapidly marching, she will have
to recommence her attempts. The real danger that menaces
Italy, and threatens her with approaching revolution and
Socialism, is that she is far too densely populated ; with
her, as everywhere, misery has been too fruitful.^

France, says Stanley, is far less densely populated, and

' The present figures are : For England, 300 ; for Italy, 282 ; for
Germany, 254 ; for France, 187 ; for Spain, 92.

= Poverty is always fruitful, because it is always careless. Are we
really to have a high opinion of the morality of persons who create
more children than they can nourish, and are we to have much
sympathy for them ?

19

274 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

has no need of. emigration, and it is deplorable that she
should spend the strength of her young men in Tonkin,
Madagascar, and Dahomey — to which places no one ever
emigrates, save some very expensive officials; above all
when she has Algeria and Tunis at her doors, and yet
is unable to populate them. These countries, indeed,
have only 25 inhabitants to the square mile, and only a
very small proportion of those are French.

Stanley is perfectly right, and has very clearly pointed
out the very essence of the problem. His conclusions
are analogous to those which were formerly indicated by
one of his compatriots, Malthus. The latter clearly
demonstrated that there is a close relation between the
population of a country and the means of subsistence,
and that, when the equilibrium is deranged, famine, war,
and all kinds of pestilence fall upon the overcrowded
country, and so set up a mortality which promptly re-
establishes the equilibrium.

The English have had occasion to verify the justice of
this law. When, after numerous wars, and murderous
ones for the vanquished, they had terminated the conquest
of the great empire of India, and brought 250 millions of
human beings under their laws, they made further
struggles between the various sovereigns impossible, and
established a profound peace throughout the Peninsula.
The results were not long in showing themselves. The
population increased in enormous proportions — at the
rate of 33 millions in the last twenty years — and very
soon was no longer in equilibrium with the means of
subsistence. Being unable to reduce itself by means of
wars, since these wars are forbidden, it tends to reduce
itself, according to the old law of Malthus, by periodic
famines, in which many millions of men die of hunger,
and by epidemics almost as disastrous. The English,
being unable to cope with the laws of Nature, look on

ECONOMIC NECESSITIES 275

with philosophy at these gigantic hecatombs, each of which
destroys as many men as all the wars of Napoleon put
together. As it is a question of Orientals, Europe remains
indifferent to this spectacle. Yet it does at least merit her
attention as a demonstration while waiting for that which
Italy will furnish very soon. The statisticians might draw
from it this lesson, that they are wrong in preaching the
gospel of multiplication to certain nations, and that if
their phrases were to have the result they look for, it
would be to launch these nations on a path of disasters.
The Socialists might learn another lesson from it, that
which I enunciated at the beginning of this chapter, that
under their apparent simplicity the social problems
present a very great complexity, and that the measures by
which we essay to remedy apparent ills have often remote
consequences which are far more distressing than the ills
they were intended to cure.

Can we suppose that with the forthcoming economic evo-
lution which I have described the over-populated nations
will in the future derive from their excess of population
advantages that they are to-day at a loss to find ? It is,
on the contrary, plain to see that this excess will be
calamitous to them, and that in the future the happiest
lot will be reserved to those countries which are more
scantily populated ; that is to say, those countries in
which the population does not exceed the number of
human beings that can be nourished on the produce of
the country itself. We saw, in the chapter devoted to the
economic struggle between East and West, that the
greater number of the countries of Europe, on account
of the exaggerated development of their population, are
no longer able to nourish their inhabitants, and are
reduced to sending to the East for their enormous annual
alimentary deficit. This deficit they have hitherto paid
for by means of merchandise manufactured expressly for

276 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

the Orientals, but as these Orientals have begun to pro-
duce the same goods at a twentieth of the European cost
of production, the commerce between the East and West
is every day tending to decrease.

The nations which live only by their commerce and
industry, not by their agriculture, will presently be the
most seriously threatened. Those which, like France,
are agriculturists, and produce nearly enough for the
consumption of their inhabitants, and could, if the worst
came to the worst, dispense with external commerce, will
be in an infinitely better position, and will suffer far less
from the crisis which is more and more threatening
Europe, and which the triumph of the Socialists would
quickly precipitate.'

BOOK V

THE CONFLICT BETWEEN THE LAWS OF EVOLUTION,
THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL, AND THE ASPIRATIONS
OF THE SOCIALISTS

CHAPTER I

THE LAWS OF EVOLUTION, THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL, AND
THE ASPIRATIONS OF THE SOCIALISTS

I. The relations between living things and their sniroundings ; — The
existence of all living creatures is conditioned by their environment —
The importance of the changes produced by environment, and the
slowness of these changes — Why species appear to be immutable —
The social environment — The sudden changes produced in these
environments by modem discoveries, and the difficulty with which man
is able to adapt himself to them. 2. The conflict between the natural
laws of evolution and the conception of the democrats: — The increasing
opposition between our theoretical conception of the world and the
realities presented by science — It is with difficulty that the democratic
ideas can place themselves in agreement with the new scientific ideas — ■
How the conflict resolves itself in practice — Democracies are finally
led to favour all kinds of superiority — The formation of castes in the
democratic regime — The dangers and advantages of democracies — The
financial morals of the American democracy — Why the venality of
American politicians is attended with only slight social inconveniences
— Democratic ideas and the sentiments of the crowd — The instincts
of crowds are not democratic. 3. The conflict between the democratic
ideal and the aspirations of the Socialists : — The fundamental oppo-
sition between the fundamental principles of democracy and Socialism
— The fate of the weak in democracies — Why they will gain nothing
by the triumph of the Socialistic ideas — The hatred of Socialists for
liberty and free competition — Socialism is really the most redoubtable
enemy of democracy.

I. The Relations between Living Things and their
Surroundings.

THE naturalists have proved long ago that the
existence of all living things is rigorously con-
ditioned by the environment in which they live, and that

278 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

a very slight modification of this environment suffices, on
the simple condition that it be prolonged, entirely to
transform its inhabitants. The procedure of these trans-
formations is to-day perfectly well known. Embryology,
which repeats the series of ancestral phases, shows us the
profound changes which have been undergone during the
succession of geologic ages.

For these transformations to be produced, it is not
necessary that the variations of environment should have
been very great, but they must have been very prolonged.
If too rapid they would lead to death and not to change.
An increase or decrease of temperature to the extent of a
few degrees, if continued during a great number of
generations, suffices, by slow adaptations, entirely to
transform the fauna or flora of a country.

M. Quinton, in a recent work, gives a very interesting
example of the changes produced by simple variations of
temperature.

" Organised beings, to compensate in themselves for
the cooling of the globe, tend artificially to maintain in
their tissues the high exterior temperature of primeval
times. The importance of this tendency is very great.
We know that it already determines, in the branch of
vertebrates, the evolution of the reproductive organs, and
correlatively that of the osseous processes. It also causes
the modification of all the other organic processes, and
consequently that of evolution itself.

" This follows plainly, from a simple d priori conside-
ration. Let us imagine an organism of primitive type.
The globe begins to cool ; the life of the organism tends
to maintain itself at its former high temperature. It can
do so only by the production of heat in the tissues, that is
to say, by combustion. All combustion demands com-
bustible material and oxygen, and here to satisfy the
demands of combustion, are determined the development

THE LAWS OF EVOLUTION 279

of the digestive and respiratory processes. The necessity
of carrying these materials and this oxygen into the
tissues, a necessity which increases as the combustion
increases, demands the evolution of the circulatory system.
From the progress of these three systems, to which the
reproductive system attaches itself, there necessarily results
the progress of the nervous system. Finally, it is not
enough to produce heat ; it must be conserved, and hence
is determineid the evolution of the integument. But as
the cooHng of the earth progresses the thermal difference
to be maintained between the two systems, animate and
inanimate, increases, so that a quicker combustion and a
more perfect organism are incessantly called for. We
thus see how by reason of the cooling of the globe, the
very natural effort which life makes to maintain the first
conditions of its chemical phenomena incessantly deter-
mines the evolution of all the organic processes, and
imposes on them d priori, a perfection proportionate to
their recency. To confirm this theoretical view we have
only to consider the various groups of animals in the
order of their appearance on the globe, and to observe
the effective advance of all their organic processes in that
order."

What is true of physical environments is also true of
the moral environments, and notably of social environ-
ments. Living beings always tend to adapt themselves,
but, on account of the power of heredity which struggles
against the tendency to change, they adapt themselves
only with extreme slowness, and the factor of time
intervenes. It is this fact that makes species seem in-
variable when we consider only the short duration of
historical ages. It is invariable to all seeming, but only
as the individual we regard for a moment is invariable.
He has not varied visibly, but none the less the slow
process which conducts him from youth to decrepitude

28o THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

and death did not cease during that instant, but accom-
plished its work although we did not see it.

All creatures, then, are conditioned by their physical
or moral environments. If they are subjected to envi-
ronments which change slowly — and such is generally
the case with continents and climates as well as with
civilisations — they have time to adapt themselves to them.
Let any particular circumstance arise which shall vio-
lently modify the environment, and adaptation becomes
impossible ; the creature is doomed to disappear. If, by
a geological upheaval, the temperature of the pole or of
the equator were to be established in France, in three or
four generations she would lose the greater number of
her inhabitants, and her civilisation could not continue
in its present state.

But these sudden cataclysms are unknown to geology,
and we know to-day that the greater number of the
transformations which have come to pass on the surface
of the globe have been effected very slowly.

Hitherto it has been the same with social environments.
Except in cases of destruction by conquest, civilisations
have always changed gradually. Many an institution has
perished, many a god has fallen into dust, but gods and
institutions alike have been replaced only after a long
period of old age. Great empires have vanished, but
only after a lengthy period of decadence, which neither
societies nor living creatures can escape. The power of
Rome finally withered before the invasions of the Bar-
barians, but it was only very gradually, after many cen-
turies of decomposition, that she finally gave place to them,
and it is in reality by the most imperceptible transitions,
contrary to what the general run of books tell us, that
the ancient world is connected with the modern world.

But by a phenomenon hitherto unique in the annals of
the world, the modern scientific and industrial discoveries

THE LAWS OF EVOLUTION 281

have in less than a century created far greater changes in
the conditions of existence than all that history has
recorded from the epoch when man sowed the seeds of
his first civilisations on the banks of the Nile and the
plains of Chaldea. Old-established societies, established
on bases they believed eternal, have seen these bases
shattered. The environment has changed too suddenly
to allow time for man to adapt himself to it, and the
result is a grave confusion of spirit, an intense uneasi-
ness, and a general opposition between the sentiments
fixed by hereditary and the conditions of existence and
ideas created by modern necessities. Everywhere the
conflict is breaking out between the old ideas and the new
ideas born of the new requirements.

We do not know yet what will result from all these
conflicts ; we can only state their existence. In con-
sidering here those which are related to the questions to
which this book is dedicated we shall see that some of
them are very profound.

2. The Conflict between the Natural Laws
OF Evolution and the Conceptions of the
Democrats.

Among the conflicts which the near future is preparing
for us, and which we already see beginning, perhaps one
of the most conspicuous will be the increasing opposition
already existing between the theoretical conceptions of
the world which were created of old by our imaginations,
and the realities which science has finally put before us.

It is not only between the religious conceptions on
which our civilisation is still based and the scientific con-
ceptions due to modern discoveries that there is evident
contradiction. This discrepancy is no longer militant ;
time has rubbed down the corners. The chief antagonists

282 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

are the new scientific doctrines and the political concep-
tions upon which the modern nations base their institu-
tions.

When the men of the Revolution, guided by the dreams
of their philosophers, saw the triumph of their humani-
tarian ideals, and inscribed the words Equality, Liberty,
and Fraternity, which were the synthesis of those dreams,
on the pediments of the public buildings, the modern
sciences were not born. So that then they could invoke
the state of nature, the original goodness of man, and his
perversion by societies, and no one could formulate a
contradiction ; and then they could act as though societies
v/ere artificial things which they could re-fashion at their
will.

But the new sciences have sprung up to make evident
the vanity of such conceptions. The doctrine of evolu-
tion above all has utterly refuted them, by showing all
through nature an incessant struggle, resulting always in
the extinction of the weakest ; a cruel law, no doubt, but
the origin of all progress, without which humanity would
never have emerged from its primitive savagery, and
would never have given birth to a civilisation.

That these scientific principles should ever have seemed
democratic, and that democracy should have assimilated
them without seeing how utterly they were opposed to it,
is one of those phenomena which can only be understood
by those who have studied the history of religions, and
who know how readily the believer will draw from a
sacred text, the most improbable deductions, and the
most completely opposed to the text itself. As a matter
of fact, nothing could be more aristocratic than the laws
of nature. " Aristocracy," as some one has justly said,
" is the law of human societies, as it is, under the name
of selection, the law of species." We have as much
trouble to-day in reconciling the new data of science

THE LAWS OF EVOLUTION 283

with our democratic illusions as had the theologians a
short time back in reconciling the Bible with the dis-
coveries of geology. We manage to conceal these divei--
gencies to a certain extent as yet by means of a certain
amount of manoeuvring, but as they are every day growing
greater they must presently be apparent to every eye.

Although very real this conflict is far from being as
grave as might be supposed. I doubt even if it will ever
be of such importance as to emerge from the region of
philosophic discussion. To tell the truth, the disagree-
ment is purely theoretical. In the facts there is no dis-
crepancy. How could there be, when these facts are the
consequences of natural laws which are superior to our
desires, and of which we cannot, therefore, escape the
effects ?

When we come to consider what is the true nature of a'^
democracy we shall see if it does not in reality favour
superiority of all kinds, including that of birth, and
whether it must not be as necessarily aristocratic, that is
to say, as favourable to the formation of a superior class,
as the forms of government that have preceded it. If
this be so its contradiction of the laws of evolution is
only apparent. — i

For this purpose let us put on one side the words by
which people define democracies and consider what their
spirit is. I find it admirably presented in the following
lines of Paul Bourget's : —

" If you try to define to yourself what is really meant
by these two terms, aristocracy and democracy, you will
find that the first designates a system of manners which
aims at the production of a small number of superior
individuals. It is the application of the adage, humanuin
•paucis vivit genus. The second, on the contrary, desig-
nates a system of manners which aims at the well-being
and culture of the greatest possible number of individuals.

284 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

The point of excellence of an aristocratic society, its
consummation, is the exceptional personage, the supreme
result and flower of thousands of destinies occupied in
sustaining this one rare being. The point of excellence
of a democratic society is a community in which work
and enjoyment are distributed in indefinite fractions
among a great number. We do not require great powers
of observation to perceive that the modern world, and in
particular our French world, is tending altogether toward
this second form of life. That which constitutes the
novelty of modern society is the substitution of the
organised mass for personal initiative, the advent of
crowds, and the disappearance, or at least the diminution,
of the power of the superior class."

Such are undoubtedly the theoretical tendencies of
democracies. Let us see if the realities agree with
them.

Democracy proposes as its fundamental principle the
equality of the rights of all men and free competition.
But who will triumph in this competition, if not the most
capable, — that is to say, those who possess certain apti-
tudes more or less due to heredity, and always favoured
by fortune ? We reject the rights of birth to-day, and we
have reason in rejecting them in order not to exaggerate
them by adding social privileges thereto. In practice
they always preserve all their power, and even a greater
power than they possessed formerly, for fi-ee competition,
coming to add itself to the intellectual gifts bestowed by
birth, can only be yet further in favour of hereditary
selection. Democratic institutions are always advanta-
geous to aristocracies of every sort, for which reason
these aristocracies must always defend them and prefer
them to any other.

Can we deny that democracies give rise to castes having
powers very nearly analogous to those of the old aristo-

THE LAWS OF EVOLUTION 285

cratic castes ? This is what M. Tarde has to say on the
subject : —

" In every democracy like our own, we may be certain
to find a social hierarchy, either estabhshed or estab-
lishing itself, of persons of recognised superiority,
either hereditary or selective. It is not difficult to see
by whom the old nobility has been replaced in France.
Firstly, the administrative hierarchy has been growing
more and more complex, has been growing upwards by
increasing the number of its degrees, and outwards by
increasing the number of its functionaries ; the military
hierarchy has been doing the same, by reason of the
causes which constrain the modern European states to
universal armament. Secondly, the prelates and princes
of the blood, the monks and gentlemen, the monasteries
and chateaux, have been suppressed only to the immense
profit of journalists and financiers, artists and politicians,
theatres, banks, ministries, great shops, huge barracks,
and other monuments all gathered together in one
quarter of the same capital. All the celebrities fore-
gather ; and what are these various species of notoriety
and glory, in all their unequal degrees, if not a hierarchy
of brilliant positions, occupied or to let, of which the
public alone disposes, or thinks it disposes ? Now, far
from simplifying or abating itself, this aristocracy of self-
gratifying situations, this dais of shining thrones, , is
incessantly growing more grandiose by the very fact
of the transformations of democracy."

So we must fully recognise that democracies give rise
to castes just as aristocracies do. The only difference is
this : in a democracy these castes do not seem to be
closed ; every one can enter them, or thinks he can.
But he can enter them only if he possess certain intel-
lectual aptitudes which birth alone can give, and which
give those who possess them a crushing superiority over

286 THE PSYCHOLOGY OP SOCIALISM

their less fortunate rivals. From this it results that
superior classes are favoured by democratic institutions,
and they may congratulate themselves that these institu-
tions are becoming so prevalent. The time is still distant
when the masses will turn away from them. It will come
eventually, for reasons I shall presently give. But in the
meantime democracy is exposed to other dangers, which
arise from its essential nature, and which we must now
consider.

The first of these inconveniences is that democracies
are very expensive. It is already a long time since Leon
Say pointed out that democracy is destined to become
the most costly of all systems of government. One of
our journals has recently published the following very
well-reasoned remarks on this subject : —

" Formerly indignation was justly excited by the pro-
digalities of the monarchical power, and by the courtiers,
who incited the prince to magnificences which returned
on them in a rain of favours and pensions. But have
the courtiers disappeared now that the people is king ?
On the contrary, has not their number grown with the
fantasies of the multiple and irresponsible master they
have tb serve ? No longer are the courtiers at Versailles,
where their gilded persons were gathered all together.
They swarm in our towns, in the country, in the
humblest chief towns of our arrondissements or can-
tons, wherever universal suffrage bestows a writ, and
can confer a morsel of power. They carry their pledges
with them ; pledges of ruinous bounties, the creation of
superfluous employments, the unconsidered development
of public works and services, all the means of facile popu-
larity, and all the electoral dodges. In Parliament they
dispense the promised largess, occupying themselves by
benefiting their electorate at the expense of the budget ;
it is the triumph of close local competition over the

THE LAWS OF EVOLUTION 287

interest of the State, the victory of the arrondissement
over France."

The exactions of the elector are sometimes singularly
excessive ; none the less the legislator who wishes to be
re-elected must respect them. Too often he has to obey
the orders of wine-merchants, or of dunder-headed petty
merchants who compose his chief electoral agents. The
elector demands the impossible, and it has to be promised.
Hence these premature reforms, undertaken with never a
suspicion of their indirect effects. A party that wishes
to arrive in power knows that it can do so only by
out-doing the promises of its rivals.

" Under every party we see another party rise up,
which stings, insults, and denounces the former. In
the time of the Convention there was la Montagne,
under the Convention, threatening to spring ; and la
Montagne on his side feared the Commune, and the
Commune was afraid of seeming too lukewarm towards
the bishops. Down to the very depths of demagogy this
law reigns and makes itself known. But we find, how-
ever, in this exploration of the ' extremes ' a troubled and
ambiguous region where we can no longer very clearly
distinguish one party from another ; it is there we find
the most ardent souls, the most ' pure,' the most bloody —
such as were Fouche, Tallien, Barras — fit to be purveyors
to the guillotine, fit valets for a Caesar. This also, this
confusion of parties at their extixme limits, is a constant
political law. We have just emerged from an experience
which was very conclusive on that point."

This intervention of crowds in democratic govern-
ments constitutes a serious danger, not merely by reason
of the exaggerated expenses which result therefrom, but
more especially on account of this redoubtable popular
delusion — that all ills can be remedied by laws. The
Chambers are thus condemned to enact an immense

288 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

number of laws and regulations of which nobody fore-
sees the consequences, and which have scarcely any
other result than to surround the liberty of the citizen
with a thousand fetters, and to increase the ills they
should remedy.

"The institutions of the State," writes an eminent
Italian economist, Signor Luzzati, "cannot change our
poor human nature, nor imbue our souls with virtues
they lack, nor raise the rate of wages so that we can save
more, because we are dependent on the universal and
inexorable conditions of national economy."

This will seem a very elementary proposition to the
philosopher, but there is no chance of its being under-
stood by the public till after a century of wars, and
bloody revolution, and wasted millions. But then the
greater number of elementary truths have been estab-
lished in the woi^ld only by these means.

Another consequence of democratic institutions is a
very great ministerial instability ; but in this there are
advantages that often balance its inconveniences. It
places the real power in the hands of the administrations
of which every minister has need, and of which he has
no time to change the old organisation and traditions
which make their strength. Besides which, every
minister, knowing that his existence will be ephemeral,
and desirous of leaving something behind him, is acces-
sible to a great number of liberal propositions. Without
these frequent changes of ministers many a desirable
undertaking would have been impossible in France.

It must also be remembered that this facility of change,
one of the consequences of democratic institutions,
renders revolutions useless, and consequently very rare.
To the Latin peoples this should count as no small
advantage.

A more serious inconvenience of democracies is the

THE LAWS OF EVOLUTION 289

increasing mediocrity of the men who govern them.
These need little but one essential quality : they must be
ready to speak at a moment's notice on any subject what-
ever, and to find immediate arguments, plausible, or at least
blustering, with which to reply to their adversaries. Such
superior minds as would reflect before delivering them-
selves, were they Pascals or Newtons, would cut a sorry
figure in Parliament. This necessity of speaking without
reflecting eliminates a number of men of solid worth and
impartial judgment from Parliament.

Such men are kept out of Parliament by other considera-
tions, and notably by this — that democracies cannot put up
with superiority in those that govern them. Those
elected, in direct contact with the crowd, can only please
it by flattering its least elevated passions and cravings,
and by making it the most unlikely promises. By that
very natural instinct which forever bids men to seek after
their likes, the crowd runs after the men of chimerical or
mediocre mind, and more and more does it plant them
in the very heart of democratic governments. I quote
from a recent Revue politique ei parlementaire : —

"The] masses naturally prefer men of vulgar mind to
men of cultured mind, and give their allegiance to the
agitated and the voluble rather than to the tranquil and
the thinkers. And they make it difficult for the latter
to be heard or be elected, by dint of making it disagree-
able. The standard is thus being almost continuously
lowered of the preoccupations which arise in politics,
of the considerations which determine them, of the aff'airs
undertaken, of the personnel of those elected, and of the
motives that move them. This is what we see at present,
and unless we wish to fall into a still lower and more
unhappy state we must look into the matter.^ We have

' Our author forgets to tell us how we are to "look into the
matter." As it would be impossible to make use of regulations,

20

290 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

arrived at such a point that to curry favour with the
crowd even our men of letters and men of talent find it
best to hold before it, as an end, the suppression of
acquired fortune, and one hardly dares to rebuke it."

And what would seem to show that this vice is
inherent in all democracies, and is not merely a racial
defect, is that this phenomenon which we observe in
France is also to be observed, and even in a far higher
degree, in the United States. The decline of the in-
tellectual and moral level of the specially qualified class
of politicians is becoming more evident every day,
at a rate which bodes ill for the future of the Great
Republic. Again, as political functions are utterly
disdained by capable men, they are exercised only by
the diclasses of all parties. The inconvenience is not
so great as it would be in Europe, for as the rdle
of the Government is very small the quality of the
political personnel does not matter so much.

It is in America also that we find one of the greatest
dangers of democracies — venality. Nowhere has it
reached such a development as in the United States.
There corruption exists in every degree of the public
services, and there is hardly an election, a concession,
a privilege, which cannot be obtained for money.
According to a recent article in the Contemporary Review
a presidental election costs ^8,000,000, which is ad-
vanced by the American plutocracy. The party which
gets in is repaid besides this largely. The first thing
done is to discharge all the functionaries and officials
at one blow, and their place are given to the electors
of the new party. The numerous partisans whom the
party is unable to place receive pensions, which are

since such regulations would be the very negation of the funda-
mental propositions and principles of democracy, it is very evident
that his proposition is entirely chimerical.

THE LAWS OF EVOLUTION 291

charged to the fund for pensions for those who took
part in the war of secession, although the greater
number of the survivors of that war have long ago
disappeared. These electoral pensions now reach the
annual figure of nearly ^^3 2,000,000.

As for the party chiefs, their appetites are much
greater. The large speculators especially, who figure
prominently in every election, feather their nests royally.
Twenty years ago, at the end of an election, it was
decreed that they might change metallic silver for gold,
on the old basis of exchange, at the Treasury. This
meant simply that on depositing in the Treasury a weight
of silver bought in the market for ;^i2 they received
gold to the value of ;£'2o. This measure was so ruinous
to the State that it soon became necessary to limit
the present which the Government made to a privileged
few to the sum of ^^10,000,000 per annum. When the
Treasury was almost exhausted, and bankruptcy threa-
tened, the execution of the Bill was suspended. This
colossial piracy had poured such fortunes into the laps
of these speculators that they did not trouble to protest
very much. We made a tremendous uproar in France
over the Panama affair, and the desperate imbecility
of a few certain magistrates did all that could be done to
dishonour us in the eyes of the world, all on account
of a few thousand-franc bills accepted by a few needy
deputies. The Americans could not by any means
understand the matter, for there was not a politician
of theirs that had not done the same thing, with the
sole difference that none of them would have been
satisfied with such an insignificant recompense. Com-
pared with the American houses, our Parliament rejoices
in a Catonian virtue. It is all the more meritorious
in that the salaries of our legislators are hardly enough
to meet the demands of their position. Moreover, in

292 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

supporting the Panama scheme, for which they were
so bitterly reproached, they did no more than obey
the unanimous demands of their electors. The Suez
Canal, which made its creator a demigod, was not made
in a different way to the Panama Canal, and could not
have been made otherwise. The purses of financiers were
never filled by proceedings of austere virtue.

There is plainly no possible excuse for the financial
manners of the United States. They are a disgrace to
the country. However, since the Americans accommodate
themselves to them very well and do not find them
in the least dishonouring, it must be because they
correspond to a certain ideal, which we must try to
comprehend. The love of wealth is at least as widespread
in Europe as in America, but we have preserved certain
ancient traditions, so that even though our shady pro-
motors and slippery financiers are envied when they
succeed, they are none the less despised, and regarded
much in the light of fortunate pirates. They are tolerated,
but we should never think of comparing them with our
scientists, artists, soldiers, and sailors — with men, that
is, who lead careers that are often ill-paid, but that
demand a certain elevation of thought or sentiment
of which the greater number of financiers are com-
pletely destitute.

In a country such as America, a country without
traditions, almost exclusively devoted to commerce and
industry, in which a perfect equality reigns, and in which
no social hierarchy exists, since all employments of any
importance, including those of the magistracy, are filled
by holders who are incessantly being renewed, and, for
the rest, enjoy no more distinction than the smallest
of shopkeepers ; in such a country, I say, only one
distinction can exist — that of fortune. The worth of an
individual, his power, and his social position are con-

THE LAWS OF EVOLUTION 293

sequently measured solely by the number of dollars he
possesses. The pursuit of dollars, accordingly, becomes
the ideal which is constantly kept in sight, and all means
are good means to realise it. The importance of a career
is measured only by what it brings in. Politics are
regarded as a simple trade which ought largely to re-
munerate those who engage in it. Although this con-
ception is plainly very dangerous and very base, the
public accepts it in entirety, since it does not scruple
to give its voice to politicians who are most notorious
for their habits of pillage.

Politics considered as a matter of commerce implies
the formation of syndicates to exploit it. Only thus
can we conceive of the power, so mysterious at first
to Europeans, of associations such as the famous
Tammany Hall of New York, which has been exploiting
the finances of that city on a large scale for more than
fifty years. It is a sort of freemasonry, which nominates
the servants of the municipality, the magisti'ates, the
police agents, the contractors, and, in short, the whole
staff of the municipality. This staff is devoted to it
body and soul, and obeys blindly the orders of the
supreme head of the association. Once only, in 1894,
the association failed to keep itself in power. The inquiry
then held on its doings revealed the most incredible
depredations. Under one of its chiefs only, the famous
William Tweed, the total sum stolen and divided between
the associates, according to the commission of inquiry,
amounted to ;£'3 2,000,000. After a short eclipse the
syndicate regained all its power. It is said that at the
last elections it spent -^1,400,000 to nominate its candidate
mayor of New York. This sum will easily be paid back
to the associates, since the mayor disposes of an annual
budget of ;£'i6,ooQ,ooo.

Any other nation than the Americans would be quickly

294 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

disorganised by such a state of morals. We know what-
has been their result in the Latin republics of America.
But the population of the United States possesses that
sovereign quality, energy, which triumphs over all
obstacles. As the danger of allowing the intervention
of financiers in public affairs has not yet become too
conspicuous, the public does not trouble about the
matter. When this danger does appear, which will
probably happen before very long, the Americans will
employ their usual energy in remedying the evil. In
such matters their proceedings are abrupt but efHcient.
We know how they rid themselves of Chinese and
negroes who embarrass them. When their financiers
and prevaricators embarrass them too much they will
have no scruples in lynching a few dozen of them in
order to make the others reflect on the utility of virtue.

The demoralisation we have just been considering
has hitherto affected only the special class of American
politicians, and has but slightly touched the commercial,
and industrial classes. And I repeat that the effects
of this state of things are also narrowly limited by
the fact that in the United States, as in all Anglo-Saxon
countries, the intervention of the Government in business
of all kinds is very slight, instead of being almost
universal, as with the Latin nations.

This is a very important point, and explains the vitality
of the American democracy compared to the feeble
vitality of the Latin democracies. Democratic institutions
cannot prosper except among nations having sufficient
initiative and force of will to enable them to conduct
their affairs without the constant intervention -of the
Government, The corruption of the State has but few
evil consequences when the influence of the public
powers is extremely limited. On the contrary, when
this influence is great, the corruption spreads everywhere,

THE LAWS OF EVOLUTION 295

and disorganisation is imminent. We have the terrible
example of the Latin republics of America to show
us the fate which lies in wait for democracy in nations
without either strength of will, morality, or energy. The
love of authority, intolerance, contempt of the law, and
ignorance of practical questions rapidly develop them-
selves, along with an inveterate taste for pillage. Then
anarchy quickly follows, and to anarchy always succeeds
dictatorship.

Such has been the end that has always threatened
democratic governments. Much more would it threaten
an entirely popular government based on Socialism.

But in addition to the dangers we have just considered,
which arise from the condition of morals, democracies
have still other difficulties to contend with, which arise
from the state of mind of the popular classes, who do
all they can to inci-ease them.

The real ,adversaries of democracy are by no means
to be found where people insist on looking for them.
It is threatened not by the aristocracy, but by the
popular classes. As soon as the crowd suffers from the
discord and the anarchy of its governors, it immediately
begins to think of a dictator. It was always so at the
troubled periods of history among those nations that
had not, or had no longer, the qualities necessary to
support free institutions. After Sylla, Marius, and the civil
wars, came Caesar, Tiberius, and Nero. After the Con-
vention, Bonaparte ; after the '48, Napoleon III. And
all these despots, sons of the universal suffrage of all
ages, were always adored by the crowd. How could
they have kept in power if the heart of the people had
not been with them ?

" Let us have the courage to say it, and to repeat it,"
wrote one of the firmest defenders of democracy, M.
Soberer, "we are condemned absolutely to misunderstand

296 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

the most characteristic instincts of universal suffrage, at
any rate in France, if we refuse to take into account the
four plebiscites which raised Louis-Napoleon to the
Presidency of the Republic, ratified the outrage of the
2nd of December, created the Empire, and, in 1870,
renewed the pact of the nation with the lamentable
adventurer."

Only a few years have elapsed since the time when the
same pact was to be renewed with another adventurer,
who had not even the authority of a name, and had no
prestige but that of his general's plume. The judges who
have arraigned kings are many ; very few are those who
have dared to arraign the people.

3. The Conflict between the Democratic Idea
AND THE Aspirations of the Socialists.

Such are the advantages and the inconveniences of
democratic institutions. They suit admirably strong and
energetic races, of which the individual is accustomed to
rely only on his own efforts. They have not in them-
selves the power to establish any kind of progress, but
they constitute an atmosphere admirably adapted to all
sorts of efforts. From this point of view nothing equals
them, and nothing could replace them. No other system
gives the most capable such liberty of development, or
gives them such chances to succeed in life. Thanks to
the liberty they permit to every individual, and the
equality which they proclaim, they favour the develop-
ment of superiority of every kind, and above all that of
intelligence ; that is to say, the superiority of which all
important progress is born.

But do this equality, and this liberty, in a struggle in
which the competitors are unequally endowed, place those
who are favoured by an intellectual heredity, and the host

THE LAWS OF EVOLUTION 297

of mediocre persons whose mental aptitudes are but little
developed, on the same footing ? Do they leave these
ill-equipped competitors much chance, not of triumphing
over their rivals, but merely of not being too far
crushed by them ? In a word, can the weak, without
energy and without courage, find in free institutions the
support they are incapable of finding in themselves ? It
seems plain that the answer is a negative, and it seems
evident also that the more we have of equality and liberty
the more complete is the servitude of the incapable, or
even of the half-capable. To remedy this servitude is
perhaps the most difficult problem of modern times. If
we set no limit to liberty, the situation of the disinherited
can only grow worse every day ; if we limit it — and
evidently the State alone can undertake such a task — we
arrive at State Socialism, the consequences of which are
worse than the ills they pretend to heal. The only means
remaining is to appeal to the altruistic sentiments of the
stronger ; but hitherto religions alone, and then only at
periods of faith, have been able to awaken such senti-
ments, which even then have constituted very fragile
bases of society.

We must thoroughly realise that the lot of feeble and
ill-adapted individuals is certainly far harder in a country
of perfect liberty and equality, such as the United States,
than in countries whose constitutions are aristocratic.
Speaking of the United States in his work on popular
government, the English historian, Maine, expresses
himself thus : —

" There has hardly ever before been a community in
which the weak have been pushed so pitilessly to the
wall, in which those who have succeeded have been so
uniformly the strong, and in which in so short a time
there has arisen so great an inequality of private fortune
and domestic luxury."

298 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

These are, evidently, the necessary inconveniences of
any regime having liberty as its base, and they are never-
theless the inevitable conditions of progress. The only
question we can ask ourselves is this : Are we to sacrifice
the necessary elements of progress, are we to consider
only the immediate and visible interest of the multitudes,
and are we to combat, mcessantly, and with all manner
of arbitrary means, the consequences of the inequality
which Nature continues to repeat in every generation ?

"Which is right," says M. Fouquier, "aristocratic
individualism or democratic solidarity ? Which is most
favourable to the progress of humanity ? Which is worth
the most, a Moliere or two hundred worthy school-
teachers ? Which renders the greater service, a Fulton or
a Watt, or a hundred mutual aid societies ? Evidently
individualism raises and democracy lowers ; evidently
the human flower grows from a human dunghill. Only
these useless, mediocre creatures, with low instincts, often
with envious hearts, with minds empty and conceited,
often dangerous, and always stupid, are still human
beings ! "

We may theoretically admit the inversion of the laws of
nature, and sacrifice the strong, who are in the minority,
to the weak, who constitute the majority. Such, when
rid of empty formulae, is the ideal pursued by the
Socialists.

Let us for a moment admit the realisation of such an
ideal ; let us suppose the individual to be imprisoned in
the close network of limits and regulations proposed by
the Socialists. Suppress capital, intelligence, and com-
petition. In order to satisfy the theory of equality, let us
place a nation in such a state of weakness that it would
be at the mercy of the first invasion. Would the masses
gain anything by it, even for a moment ?

Alas, no ! They would gain nothing, even at the

THE LAWS OF EVOLUTION 299

beginning, and very soon they would lose everything.
The progress which enriches the workers is effected only
by superior minds, and only such minds can direct the
complicated machinery of civilisation. Without superior
minds a country would soon become a body without a
soul. The workshop could not keep running long with-
out the engineer who builds it and directs it. It would
soon be what a ship is deprived of its officers ; a wreck at
the mercy of the waves, which will founder on the first
rock it approaches. Without the great and the strong
the future of the mediocre would apparently be more
miserable than it has ever been yet.

Such are the conclusions clearly pointed out by reason.
But the proof is not accessible to every mind, because
the matter has not been put to the test of experience.
The disciples of the Socialist faith are not to be convinced
by arguments.

Democracy, by its very principles, favours the liberty
and competition which of necessity lead to the triumph of
the most capable, while Socialism, on the contrary, aims
at the suppression of competition, the disappearance
of liberty, and a general equalisation, so that there
is evidently an insuperable opposition between the
principles of Socialism and those of democracy.

Modern Socialists have finally become aware of this
fact, at least instinctively ; for they cannot, with their
pretensions that all men have equal capacities, openly
recognise the opposition. Of this instinct, most often
confused and unconscious, but nevertheless very real, is
born the hatred of the Socialists for the democratic
system, a hatred far more intense than was felt by the
men of the Revolution for the ancien rigime. Nothing
could be less democratic than their desire to destroy the
effects of liberty and natural inequality by an absolutely
despotic regime, which would suppress all competition,

300 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

give the same salary to the capable and the incapable,
and incessantly destroy, by means of administrative
measures, the social inequalities which arise from natural
inequalities.

There is to-day no lack of ^flatterers ready to persuade
the masses that the realisation of such an ideal is easy.
These dangerous prophets know they will live long
enough to reap the fruits of their populai-ity, but not
long enough for events to expose them as impostors, so
that they have nothing to lose.

This conflict between the democratic idea and the
aspirations of the Socialists is so far invisible to super-
ficial minds, and most people consider Socialism only as
the necessary development and foreseen consequence of
the democratic idea. In reality no two political concep-
tions are separated by deeper gulfs than Socialism and
democracy. A pure atheist is in many respects far more
nearly related to a devotee than is a Socialist to a democrat
faithful to the principles of the Revolution. The diver-
gency between the two doctrines is as yet hardly beginning
to show itself, but it will soon be glaring, and then there
will be a violent disruption.

It is not between democracy and science that there is
and will be a real conflict, but between Socialism and
democracy. Democracy has indirectly given rise to
Socialism, and by Socialism, perhaps, it will perish.

We must not dream, as some have done, of allowing
Socialism to attempt its object in order to prove its
weakness, for Socialism would immediately give birth
to Caesarism, which would promptly suppress all the
institutions of democracy. To-day, and not the future,
is the time for the democrats to encounter with their
formidable enemy Socialism. It constitutes a danger
against which all parties without exception must league
themselves, and with which none, and least of all the

THE LAWS OF EVOLUTION 301

republican party, must ever ally itsjelf. We may contest
the theoretical value of the institutions which govern us,
we may wish that the march of events had been other-
wise, but such avowals must remain platonic. Before
the common enemy all parties, whatever be their aspira-
tions, must unite. They would have none but the
slightest «chances of gaining anything by a change of
regime, and they would expose themselves to the risk
of losing all.

It is true that the democratic ideas have not, from a
theoretical point of view, a base any more solid than that
of religious ideas, but this defect, which formerly had no
sort of influence over the fate of the latter, will no more
be able to hinder the destiny of the former. The taste
for democracy is to-day universal throughout all the
nations, whatever be the form of their governments.
We are, then, in the presence of one of those great
social movements to seek to stem which would be
futile. The principal enemy of democracy at the
present time, and the only one which could possibly
overthrow it, is Socialism.

CHAPTER II

THE SOURCES AND DIVISION OF WEALTH : INTELLI-
GENCE, CAPITAL, AND LABOUR

I. Intelligence : — The immense part played by intelligence in the modern
evolution of the world — It is the principal source of the wealth by
which every worker benefits — The work of the labourer is of profit to
himself alone ; the work of the inventor is of profit to all workers —
The capacities of a small aristocracy of intelUgence produce more
wealth than the labour of all the rest of the population — The hatred
of the Socialists for intelligence — The foundation, from their point of
view, of this hatred. 2. Capital : — Definition of capital— The part
played by capital — The services rendered by the capitalist to the
workers by lowering the cost price of merchandise — The present
diffusion of capital in a large number of hands — Progressive sub-
division of the public fortune — What would be the result of the equal
partition of the public fortune among all the workers — The pro-
gressive reduction of the part played by the shareholders in all
industrial undertakings, and the constant enlargement of that of the
workers — The revenue of the shareholder is gradually tending to
disappear — Future consequences — The present condition of real
fortune — Why it also is tending to disappear — Great property is no
longer a source of wealth, and is steadily tending to become sub-
divided — The same phenomena are to be observed in France and
in England. 3. Labour: — The present relations of capital and labour
— The situation of the workers has never been so prosperous as to-day
— Constant rise of the wages of the workers — These wages are often
greater than the salaries earned in the liberal professions — The
working class is the only class whose condition is steadily bettering.
4. The relations of capital and labour : — Employers and men — The
increasing hostility of the working classes against capital^-The total
lack of comprehension to be observed in the relations of employers
and men — ^The employer in modern industry — Employers -and
workers form to-day two always inimical classes.

FROM the generalities of the preceding chapters we
shall now proceed to details, inquire into the

sources of wealth, and see if it could be produced and

302

SOURCES AND DIVISION OF WEALTH 303

distributed conformably with the aspirations of the
Socialists,

Practically the Socialists recognise but two sources of
wealth — capital and labour, and all their demands are
directed against the part, according to them too great,
which is assumed by capital. Being unable to deny the
necessity of capital in modern industry, they dream of
the suppression of the capitalists.

But besides capital and labour there is a third source
of wealth — intelligence, which the Socialists usually con-
sider to be of but little value. None the less its action is
predominating, and for this reason we shall commence
our investigation with a consideration of its functions.

I. Intelligence.

In the dawn of civilisation intellectual capacity played
a part scarcely superior to that of manual labour, but
with the progress of industry and the sciences its part
finally became so preponderant that its importance
cannot now be exaggerated. The toil of the obscure
labourer is of profit only to himself, while the works of
intelligence enrich the whole of humanity. A Socialist
recently assured the Chamber of Deputies that "there
are no such men as are in human reality the human
equivalent of a hundred thousand men." It is easy to
reply to him that in less than a century we can cite, from
Stephenson to Pasteur, a whole aristocracy of inventors,
each one of which is worth far more than a hundred
thousand men, not only by the theoretical value of his
discoveries, but by reason, of the wealth which his
inventions have poured into the world, and the benefits
which every worker has derived from them. If on the
last Day of Judgment the works of men are weighed
at their true worth, how immense will prove the weight

304 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

of the works of these mighty geniuses ! It is to them,
thanks to their discoveries, that is due the greater part of
the capital existing in the world. The English econo-
mist Mallock has reckoned that one-third of the present
revenue of England may be imputed to the capacity
of a small elite, which by itself produces far more than
all the rest of the population.

The Socialists of every school are loth to admit the
importance of intellectual superiority. Their high priest
Marx understands by the term work nothing but manual
labour, and relegates the spirit of invention, capacity, and
direction, which has nevertheless transformed the world,
to a second place.

This hatred of intelligence on the part of the Socialists
is well founded, for it is precisely this intelligence that
will prove the eternal obstacle on which all their ideas of
equality will shatter themselves. Let us suppose that by
a measure analogous to the ' Edict of Nantes — a measure
which the Socialists, were they the masters, would very
soon be driven to enforce — all the intellectual superiority
of Europe — all the scientists, artists, great manufacturers,
inventors, skilled workmen, and so forth, were expelled
from civilised countries, and obliged to take refuge in a
narrow territory at present almost uninhabited — Iceland,
for example. Let us further suppose that they departed
without a halfpenny of capital. It is nevertheless im-
possible to doubt that this country, barren as it is supposed
to be, would soon quickly become the first country in
the world for civilisation and wealth. This wealth would
soon be such that the exiles would be able to maintain a
powerful army of mercenaries, and would have nothing
to fear from any side. I do not think that such a
hypothesis is altogether impossible of realisation in the
future.

SOURCES AND DIVISION OP WEALTH 305

2. Capital.

Capital comprises all objects — merchandise, tools,
plant, houses, lands, and so forth — having any negotiable
value whatever. Money is only the representative
symbol, the commercial unit, which serves to evaluate
and exchange objects of various kinds.

For the Socialists, work is the only' source and measure
of value. Capital would be merely a portion of unpaid
work stolen from the worker.

It would be very foolish to waste time to-day in dis-
cussing assertions which have been so often refuted.
Capital is work, either material or intellectual, accumu-
lated. It is capital that has freed man from the slavery
of the Middle Ages, and above all from the slavery of
nature, and which constitutes to-day the fundamental
basis of all civilisation. To persecute capital would be
to oblige it to vanish or to conceal itself, and at the same
blow to kill industry, which it would no longer be able
to support, and also to suppress wages. These are
banalities that really require no demonstration.

The utility of capital in industry is so evident that
although all the Socialists speak of suppressing the
capitalist they seldom speak nowadays of suppressing
capital. Nevertheless, the great capitalist renders im-
mense services to the public by reducing the cost of
production and the sale price of general merchandise.
A large manufacturer, importer, or tradesman can con-
tent himself with a profit of 5 per cent, or 6 per cent., and
can consequently sell his wares at far lower prices than
those charged by the small dealer or manufacturer, who
in order to cover his expenses is obliged to make a gross
profit on his goods of 40 per cent, to 50 per cent.i

' And sometimes a still higher profit. Ac^rding to a document
which has appeared in several papers the price of necessaries is

21

3o6 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

The following figures, taken from a paper read to the
Society of Statistics, and published in the Officiel of June
27, 1896, give some information which is very interesting
and seems to be exact, at least if taken in general, as is
the case with most of the figures of the statisticians.
They show at the same time the increase of wealth
and that of the number of the participators in this
wealth.

The nominal capital of French incomes from property,
which was ^^28,520,000 in 1800, was ;^i77,040,ooo in
1830 ; in 1852 it was ;^220,64o,ooo, and in 1896 it was
^1,040,000,000.

The number of annuitants, which in 1830 was 195,000,
was 5,000,000 in 1895. The number of annuitants would
be twenty-five times as great as in 1814.^

The increase in the number of participators in indus-
trial enterprises is also tending to increase. In 1888
there were 22,000 shareholders in the Credit fonder, and
there are now 40,000.

We find the same increase in the number of holders of
railway shares and bonds : there are now 2,900,000.

We shall see presently that it is the same with property.
Nearly two-thirds of France are in the hands of 6,000,000

often quadrupled by small retailers. To give only one example :
a consignment of salad is sold to the public in Paris for about 45
francs ; of this the grower receives rather less than 10 francs. " We
may say," says the writer of the article, " that in the provision market
of the Halles de Paris the Parisian consumer pays s francs for what
the provincial producer sells at 1 franc." It is easy to see how
much the public would gain if large capitalists would undertake
the sale of provisions as they have already undertaken the sale of
clothing.

' But we must not forget that as the same person may-have several
titles to property, these figures have no absolute value. According
to information received from the Minister of Finance, the number of
entries, nominative or au porieur, were, at the end of 1896,4,522,449,
and not 5,000,000 as in the report I have been quoting. Of course,
we do not know among how many these entries really represent,
despite the conclusions of the statistician in question.

SOURCES AND DIVISION OF WEALTH 307

proprietors. M. Leroy-Beaulieu arrives finally at the con-
clusion that " three-quarters of the accumulated fortune
of France and probably nearly four-fifths of the national
revenue are in the hands of workmen, peasants, people of
the lower middle classes, and small proprietors." Large
fortunes are becoming more and more rare. The
statistics give the number of families possessing an
income of ;^300 at 2 per cent, at most. Of 500,000
inherited incomes only 2,600 exceed the sum of ;^8oo in
capital.

Capital is thus tending more and more to diffuse itself
into a large number of hands, and it is so diffusing itself
because it is constantly increasing. The laws of
economics are here acting in the direction desired by
the Socialists, but by very different means to those in
favour with the Socialists, since the effect produced is the
consequence of the abundance of capital, and not its
suppression.

We may, however, inquire what the equal partition
between all of the general fortune of a country would
produce, and if the workers would gain by it. It is easy
to reply to this question.

Let us suppose that, in accordance with the wish of
certain Socialists, the ;^8,8oo,ooo,ooo which represent
the fortune of France were divided equally among its
38,000,000 inhabitants. Let us also suppose that this
fortune could be realised in money, a plainly impossible
thing, since we have only about ;^30o,ooo,ooo in money,
the rest being represented by houses, factories, land, and
all kinds of objects. Let us suppose again that at the
announcement of this partition the value of all property
but real estate did not vanish in twenty-four hours.
Admitting all these impossibilities, each individual would
have a capital of about ;^22o. One must know very
little of human nature not to be certain that incapacity

3o8 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

and waste on the one hand, and capacity, thrift, and
energy on the other, would soon do their work. The
inequality of wealth would be promptly re-established.
If, in order to avoid a general partition, we limited our-
selves to dividing only the large fortunes ; if, for example,
we were to confiscate all incomes over ^^1,000 to divide
them among the poorer citizens, the incomes of the latter
would be increased by only 4^ per cent. A man in
receipt of an income of £^0 would then receive £^i i6s. 8d.
In exchange for this insignificant increase of 4J per cent,
all commerce, and numerous industries, which provide
millions with the means of subsistence, would be totally
ruined.i Indeed, the working classes generally would be
ruined, and their lot would be far worse than it is to-day.
Concurrently with the observed diffusion of capital,
which all sincere Socialists must bless, we also find that
the interest from capital sunk in industrial enterprises is

' This, it is true, is only the material side of the question, and
there is also a psychological side which we must not neglect. What
constitutes the scandal of great fortunes, and provokes so many
recriminations, is firstly their origin, which is only too often to be
found in veritable financial depredations ; secondly, the enormous
power which they give to their possessors, allowing them to buy
anything and everything, down to the title of member of the most
learned academies ; thirdly, the scandalous life led by the heirs of
those who have founded these fortunes.

It is evident that a manufacturer who enriches himself by selling
cheaply a commodity which was formerly dear, or by creating a new
industry, such as the transformation of steel in the furnace, a new
method of heating, &c., renders a service to the public in enriching
himself. It is quite otherwise with the financiers of foreign
extraction whose fortunes are made by lending the public money
in a whole series of loans to rotten countries, or in placing on the
market shares of dubious companies, from which operations they
often derive a profit of 25 per cent. Their colossal fortunes are
practically composed of the adding up of unpunished thefts, and every
State must sooner or later find some means or other, whether it be
by enormous death duties or by crushing taxation, to protect the
pubUc fortune from their thefts, and to prevent them from founding
a State within the State. This necessity has already preoccupied
several eminent philosophers.

SOURCES AND DIVISION OF WEALTH 309

growing less, whilst, on the contrary, the gains of the
workers are increasing.

M, Harz6, Inspector of Mines in Belgium, has shown
that in the last thirty years, while the working expenses
of the mines have oscillated round the figure of 38 per
cent., the profits of the shareholders have steadily fallen
to less than half, while the profits of the workers have
considerably increased.

It has been calculated that if the revenue of certain
enterprises were turned over to the workers, each work-
man would gain, on an average, ^^3 6s. 8d. per annum.
But they would not do so for long. The enterprise
would necessarily, in this hypothesis, be conducted by
the workers, would soon be in straits, and the workers
would finally gain far less than in the present state of
affairs.

The same phenomenon of the increase of wages at the
expense of the remuneration of capital is to be observed
everywhere. According to M. Daniel ZoUa, while the
returns of landed capital fell 25 per cent, the salaries of
agricultural labourers rose 11 per cent. According to M.
Lavoll6e, the income of the working classes in England
has risen 59 per cent., and the income of the leisured
classes has fallen 30 per cent.

The wages of the working man will doubtless continue
to rise in this manner until there is left only the minimum
amount necessary to the remuneration, not of the capital
sunk in an enterprise, but merely of the administrators
necessary to the enterprise. This, at least, is the way
matters are taking at present ; it may not be the same in
the future. The capital sunk in long-established enter-
prises cannot escape from the disappearance that
threatens it, but in future capital may better know how
to defend itself.

The worker of the present day finds himself in a phase

310 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

he will not see again, a phase in which he can dictate his
own laws and bleed with impunity the goose that lays the
golden eggs. It is certain that the trades-unions will
finally arrive at demanding the whole of the profits of all
railways, transport and omnibus companies, all factories,
workshops, mines, &c., and will stop only at the precise
moment at which the dividend of the shareholder will be
reduced to zero, but while there will yet remain just
enough to pay the directors and administrators. We have
learned, by innumerable examples, with what admirable
patience the shareholder puts up with first of all the
reduction and then the total suppression of his profits on
the part of States or private companies. Sheep do not
stretch their necks to the butcher with greater dbcility.

This phenomenon of the gradual reduction, tending to
total disappearance, of the profits of the shareholder, is
to be observed to-day on a great scale. Through the
indifference and weakness of the administrators of our
large companies, all the demands of the unions are
immediately satisfied ; it is hardly necessary to say that
the money to satisfy them must come out of the share-
holder's pocket. The demands of the union are naturally
promptly repeated, and naturally, again, the adminis-
trators, who have nothing to lose, continue to satisfy
them, which once more reduces the dividend, and con-
sequently the value of the share. On account of this
method of ingenious spoliation many of our large indus-
trial enterprises will bring in absolutely nothing in a few
years' time. The real proprietors of the enterprise will
have been gradually and totally eliminated, which is the
dream of the CoUectivists. It is difficult to see how it
will then be possible to find shareholders to found fresh
enterprises. Already we see a judicious distrust forming
itself, and a tendency to export capital to the countries in
which it runs fewer risks. The exodus of capital, and of

SOURCES AND DIVISION OF WEALTH 311

capacity too, will be the first result of the complete
triumph of the Socialists.

The double phenomenon that we have just been con-
sidering as afifecting capital — the division of wealth among
a larger and larger number, and the reduction of the
profits of capital on account of the steady increase of the
profits of the workers^ — will be found to exist as affecting
landed property also. According to M. E. Tisserand's
report on the last decennial inquiry, there are in France
122,000,000 acres under. cultivation. They are divided
into 5,672,000 holdings, of which only 2J per cent, are
given over to " la grande culture," that is, are of more than
100 acres in extent. But this 2^ per cent, of the holdings
comprises in extent 45 per cent, of the soil ; so that if
there is a great preponderance in number of the small
holdings, it is also the fact that nearly half the soil is
comprised by 2J per cent, only of the number of holdings.
Thus nearly half the soil of France is in the hands of
large proprietors, but it is evident that this is a state
of things that cannot long continue, simply on account
of the decreasing part which is left to capital in enter-
prises of whatever kind. It is easy to show that large
properties will very soon be a thing of the past.

The agriculture of France is exercised by about
7,000,000 individuals, or 11,000,000 counting their
families and servants. Of this number nearly one-half
are the proprietors of the soil they cultivate ; the others
work for wages. Now if we compare the agricultural
statistics for 1856 with those for 1886, the last published,
we see that in 1856 there were 52 agriculturists for
every 100 inhabitants, and only 47 in 1886. But this
decrease, which the economists find so disquieting, is
simply the result of the steady increase of small holdings.
This will appear from the results of the two great
decennial inquiries of 1862 and 1882. We find that

312 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

although the number of day labourers and farm servants
has fallen from 4,098,000 to 3,434,000, a decrease of
664,000, and the number of farmers from 1,435,000 to
1,309,000, a decrease of 126,000, the number of pro-
prietor-cultivators, on the contrary, has risen from
1,812,000 to 2,150,000, an increase of 338,000. There is,
therefore, a very sensible increase in the number of
proprietor-cultivators.

This increase in the number of proprietors is a pheno-
menon exactly parallel with the increase in the number
of capitalists. If the number of persons cultivating the
soil on their own account increases, it is evident that the
number of farmers and farm servants must diminish j
and more especially the number of farm servants, since
the costly labourer is being steadily replaced by agri-
cultural machines. Again, the extent of pasture-lands
has increased by one-quarter since 1862, and this increase,
as pasture demands but few hands, has also contributed
to the decrease in the number of labourers and servants.
If the country districts have been slightly depopulated —
very slightly, as we have seen — it is merely because they
require fewer hands ; but they have never had too few.
There are plenty of hands ; it is the heads that are a little
scarce.

Small holdings, evidently, are not very productive, but
at least they feed those who cultivate them. The latter,
it is true, earn less than if they were working for others ;
but to work for oneself is a very different thing from
working for a master.

The situation of the large proprietors is most precarious
in France as well as in England, and this, as I have said
above, is why they are tending to disappear. Their lands
are condemned to subdivision in the near future.
Unable to cultiva,te them themselves, seeing them bring
in less and less, on account of foreign conipetition, while

SOURCES AND DIVISION OF WEALTH 313

at the same time . the demands of their labourers are
increasing, they are gradually obliged to give up exploit-
ing them, for the expenses of cultivation are often greater
than the returns,^ so that they or their heirs will be forced
to sell their lands at low prices, and in fragments, to small
proprietors who will cultivate them themselves. The
latter have practically no expenses, neither have they
capital to remunerate, taking into account the low price
of their purchases. Large property will soon be only
an object of useless luxury. Already it is no longer a
source, but a sign of wealth.

The facts we have just been considering are to be
observed on every hand, and more especially in countries
where there are many large properties, as in England.
They result, as I have said, from the increasing demands
of the working population, together with the fall in the
value of the products of the soil, due to the competition
of counrties in which the land is without value, as
America, or in which labour is without value, as the
Indies. This competition has in a few years brought
down the price of wheat in France to 75 per cent, of its
former value, in spite of a protective tariff of as. per
bushel, a tariff which is of course paid by all the
consumers of bread.

In England, the land of liberty, where there are no
protective duties against foreign competition, the crisis
is to be observed in all its intensity. The English ports
are full of foreign corn, as well as foreign meats. Refri-
gerator vessels are continually making the passage
between Sydney, Melbourne, and London. They carry
beef and mutton ready for the shops at a penny or three
halfpence a pound, to say nothing of butter, of which

' In Aisne, a district of large farms, it is said that a few years ago
there were 900 important farms deserted ; but we never hear of a
single small property being abandoned by its proprietor.

314 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

certain of these boats bring over as many as 600 tons
in a single voyage. Although the proprietors have
reduced their rents by more than 30 per cent, they
make next to nothing from their property, for their
tenants profit by their embarrassments to pay less and less
or nothing at all. M. de Mandat-Grancy, in his remark-
able work on the subject, mentions proprietors whose
books he has examined, whose property brought in from
;^20,ooo to ^£30,000 a few years ago, and now brings in no
more than ;£400 or ;£5oo ; and this on account of the
non-payment of tenants. It was impossible to evict the
farmers who did not pay, for the simple reason that none
could be found who would be able to pay, and that even
if they did not pay, they did at least perform the service
of keeping the land in condition, and preventing it
from going out of cultivation. The proprietors will be
obliged to split up their properties and to sell them at
very low prices to small cultivators, who will work on
them directly, and at a profit, since the price of purchase
will be insignificant.

It is perhaps a matter for regret that the large pro-
prietors should everywhere be destined to become, in the
near future, the victims of the evolution of economic
laws ; but as a matter of fact I think it will be very
considerably in the interests of the societies of the future
that landed property should be divided to such an extent
that every one should possess only as much as he could
cultivate.^ The result of such a State of things would be a
very great political stability, and in such a society Socialism
would have no chance of success.

In conclusion : what we have said of the repartition of
capital is also true of the repartition of the soil. Large
properties are doomed to disappear by the action of
economic laws. Before the Socialists have finished dis-
cussing the matter the object of their discussions will

SOURCES AND DIVISION OF WEALTH 315

have vanished, by reason of the imperturbable progress
of those natural laws that work now according to our
doctrines and now in a contrary sense, but always
unheeding them.

3. Labour.

The figures I have given show the progressive increase
of the profits of labour, and the no less progressive
decrease of the profits of capital. For a long time
capital, on account of its incontestable necessity, has
been able to enforce its demands on the workers ; but
to-day their respective rdles have changed. The rela-
tions of capital and labour, which were at first those of
master and servant, are to-day like to become inverted.
Now it is capital that is descending to the rank of a
servant. The progress of humanitarian ideas, the in-
creasing indifference on the part of directors and
administrators for the interests of shareholders whom
they do not know, and above all the enormous extension
of trades-unions, have little by little brought about this
effacement of capital.

Despite the noisy demands of the Socialists, it is
evident that the situation of the working classes has
never been as prosperous as it is at present, and, taking
into consideration the economic necessities which rule
the world, it is very probable that the workers are passing
through a golden age that they will never see again.
Never has such justice been done to their claims as
to-day, and never has capital been as little oppressive and
at the same time so little exacting.

As Mr. Mallock has justly remarked, the income of the
modern working classes is far greater than the income of
all classes taken together sixty years ago. They possess,
in fact, at present, far more than they would have
possessed if the whole of the public fortune had then

3i6 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

passed into their hands, according to the dreams of
certain Socialists.

Since 1813, according to M, de Foville, salaries in
France have more than doubled, while money has only
lost a third of its value.

In Paris, nearly 60 per cent, of working men earn a
daily wage of 4s. 2d. to 6s. 8d., and according to the
figures published by the Office du travail, the salaries of
the better class of workmen are very much higher. The
daily wage of a fitter varies from 6s. 3d. to 7s. id., and
that of a turner from 7s. 6d. to 8s. 4d. Fine stone-cutters
can earn as much as 12s. 6d. a day ; electricians from 5s,
to 8s. 4d. ; brassfounders, from 7s. id. to los. jd. ; sheet-
iron workers, from 7s. 6d. to 9s. ; an ordinary foreman
earns 8s. 4d. a day, and a really capable one as much as
;^38o per annum. These are such salaries as an officer,
a magistrate, an engineer, or a Government clerk will often
serve for years and years to obtain, if he does attain
them at all. We may say with M. Leroy-Beaulieu :
" The manual worker is the great beneficiary of our
civilisation.! All situations around him are falling, and
his is rising."

4. The Relations between Capital and Labour :
Employers and Men.

Notwithstanding the very satisfying position of the

' One would gather from reading the speeches delivered in Parlia-
ment that the working class is the only class in society to be con-
sidered. It is certainly considered more than any other. The
peasants, at once more numerous, and, I should imagine, quite as
interesting, attract little enough attention. Pensions, banks, aid and
assurance societies, economic dwellings, co-operative societies,
abatements of taxes, and so forth, are all intended to benefit the
working man, and both public and private authorities are always
excusing themselves for not doing enough for him. The great
manufacturers follow suit, and the workman is to-day surrounded
with all kinds of solicitude.

SOURCES AND DIVISION OF WEALTH 317

modern workman, we may say that the relations between
masters and men, that is to say, between capital and labour,
have never been more strained. The workman is be-
coming more and more exacting in proportion as his
desires are more fully satisfied. The more he obtains
from his employer the greater grows his hostility towards
him. He accustoms himself to see in his master only
an enemy, and the master, not unnaturally, tends to
regard his men as adversaries, whom it is his duty to
mistrust, and finally he no longer dissimulates his antipathy
for them.

But although we admit the wants and the evident
wrongs of the workers, we must not deny those of the
masters. The direction of a staff of working men is a
matter of subtle and delicate psychology, demanding a
conscientious study of men. The modern employer, who
controls an anonymous crowd from a distance, knows
nothing or next to nothing about his men. With a little
skill he could often succeed in re-establishing an _under-
standing with them, as is proved by the prosperity of
certain co-operative workshops, in which the employers
and men form a veritable happy family.

But at present the master does not know his men, and

controls them by intermediaries, and yet he is always

astonished at meeting with nothing but hostility and

antipathy, notwithstanding all the aid societies, savings

banks,^ and so forth, to say nothing of the elevation of

wages. The fact is that the personal relations of the past

have been replaced by an anonymous and sti-ictly rigid

' Ninety-seven per cent, of our mining companies give their men
pensions, and, according to M. Leroy-Beaulieu, more tlian half their
earnings are turned over to the miners' aid societies. All our
directors of industrial companies are engaged in this course, which
is a very easy one for them, for all this generosity is at the expense
of the shareholders, who, as every one knows, may be taxed and
imposed upon at will. The Paris-Lyon railway spends ^^500,000
annually in this manner, and the other railway companies do the same.

3i8 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

discipline. The employer will often make himself feared,
but he no longer makes himself liked or respected, and he
has lost all his prestige. Mistrustful of his men, he allows
them no initiative, and is always wanting to interfere in
their affairs (of course I am speaking for the Latin
nations). He will found co-operative societies or pro-
vidential societies, buti he will never suffer them to be
managed by the men themselves, so that the latter regard
them as speculations, or instruments of bondage, or at
the best as a disdainful charity. They imagine they are
being exploited or humiliated, and the result is irritation.
For the rest, it argues a poor understanding of the
psychology of crowds to believe that benefits of a col-
lective kind are received with gratitude. More often
than not they merely provoke irritation, ingratitude, and
contempt for the weakness of those who yield so readily
to all their exactions.^ In this case the manner of giving
is truly of greater importance than the gift. The trades-

' This was curiously exemplified by the celebrated strike at
Carmaux. The director found by experience what excessive
benevolence and want of firmness may cost. He used to pay his
men far more than they would have received elsewhere, and
organised stores at which everything necessary for the consumption
of the men was retailed to them at wholesale prices. Here is an
extract from an interview with this director published in the journal
of August 13, 1895 : "The Carmaux glassworks have always paid
higher wages than any others. I paid such high wages because I
wanted to make sure of tranquillity. Every year, in fact, I have
paid the men £400 more than they would have earned in another
glassworks. And what has been the result of this enormous sacrifice ?
To create the very troubles I wished at all costs to avoid." With a
somewhat clearer knowledge of psychology the director would have
foreseen that such concessions must necessarily provoke fresh
demands. All primitive beings have always despised weakness
and good-nature. The man who possesses these qualities has no
prestige in their eyes ; power is the only thing they venerate.
Those tyrants who have been noted for their prestige were seldom
noted for their benevolence. It was sufficient if they coloured their
tyranny with a somewhat remote and haughty benevolence to be
adored.

SOURCES AND DIVISION OF WEALTH 319

unions, which, on account of their anonymity are able to
exercise, and do exercise, a tyranny far more severe than
that of the most inflexible employer, are religiously
respected. They have prestige, and the workman always
obeys them, even when he loses his wages by his obedience.
Again, the employer himself, in our great modern
concerns, is tending steadily to become a mere subaltern
in the pay of a company, and consequently has no
motive in interesting himself in his staff. He does not
know how to speak to a workman. A small employer who
has himself been a workman will very often be a much
harder master, but he will understand perfectly how to
manage his men, rate them at their true worth, and save
their amour-propre. At the present tirne the managers of
workshops are more often than not young engineers
from one of our great colleges, with any amount of
theoretical instruction, and a profound ignorance of life
and of men. They could not possibly know less than
they do about their profession, and they will not admit
that any customs of men or things can be superior to
their abstract science. They are all the more unsuited to
their duties in that they profess the deepest scorn for the
class from which the greater number of them are sprung.^

' The candidates for our great Government colleges (I'^cole
polytechnique, I'Ecole centrale, &c.) are to-day recruited principally
from the lowest classes of society. The entrance and final exami-
nations demand efforts of memory and an amount of work almost
impossible save f9r those who are spurred on by poverty. Although
the fees of the Ecole polytechnique are very low, the families of
more than half of the pupils are unable to pay them. They are the
sons of small tradesmen, domestic servants, workmen, or small
clerks, and have for the most part already obtained a bursary from
their lycee. According to an article by M. Cheysson in the
Annates des Fonts et Chausees, for November, 1882, the number
of bursars at the Ecole polytechnique was about 30 per cent, in 1850,
and over 50 per cent, in 1880. Since then the proportion has been
increasing. According to a personal inquiry of my own, there were
in 1897 249 pupils out of 447 who paid no fees.

320 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

No one despises the peasant like the son of a peasant,
nor the workman like the son of a workman, when he has
succeeded in raising himself a little above his caste. Here
again is one of those psychological verities which, like
the greater number of psychological verities, for that
matter, are disagreeable to state, but which must none
the less be submitted to. Far more instructed than truly
intelligent, the young engineer is totally unable to repre-
sent to himself — for that matter he does not try — the
ideas and trains of reasoning of the men he is' called
upon to direct. Moreover, he does not preoccupy him-
self with the true means of influencing them. These
matters are not taught in the schools, and therefore do
not exist for him. His entire knowledge of psychology
is confined to two or three ready-made ideas, which he
has heard repeated by those about him, concerning the
grossness and drunkenness of the artisan, and the
necessity of keeping a tight rein on him, and so on. He
catches only distorted glimpses of the ideas and concep-
tions of the workman. He will touch the delicate wheels
of the human machine wrongly and clumsily. He will
be weak or unreasonably despotic, according to his
temperament, but in any case he will have no prestige
and no real authority.

More than all else it is the insurmountable lack of
comprehension which exists between the masters and the
men that renders their present relations so strained.

The conceptions which the masters and men form
respectively of their respective ideas and sentiments
possess one thing in common. Each party being
unable to assimilate the thoughts, cravings, and
tastes of the other party, they interpret what they
know nothing about according to their respective
mentalities. The idea that the proletariat has of the bour-
geois, that is to say, of the man who does not work with

SOURCES AND DIVISION OF WEALTH 321

his hands, is simple in the extreme ; he is a hard and
rapacious being who makes the workman work only to
get money out of him, who eats and drinks a great deal,
and amuses himself with all kinds of excesses. His
luxuries — however modest they may be, though they con-
sist only of decent clothes and a fairly tidy house — are
only a monstrous waste. His literary or scientific labours
are sheer foolery, the whims of an idler. He has so much
money that he does not know what to do with it, while
the workman has none. Nothing would be easier than
to remedy this injustice, since a few wholesome laws
would suffice to reconstitute society between nightfall
and sunrise. Force the rich to give the people what
belongs to them ; it would merely be to repair a crying
injustice. If the proletariat were able to doubt his own
logic there would be no lack of orators, more servile
before him than the courtiers of an Oriental despot before
their master, ready to remind him incessantly of his
imaginary rights. Unless, as I have already shown,
certain notions had been firmly implanted in the popular
subconsciousness by heredity, the Socialists must have
triumphed long ago.

The conception which the bourgeois forms of the work-
ing man is quite as inexact. For the master, the man is a
rude, drunken boor. Incapable of thrift, he squanders his
wages, without counting them, at the wineshop, instead of
spending the evening soberly in his room. Ought he not
to be thankful for his lot, and does he not earn far more
than he deserves ? He is given libraries, he is allowed
conferences, and cheap dwellings are built for him. What
more can he want ? Is he not incapable of looking after
his own affairs ? He must be controlled by a grip of
iron, and if anything is done for his benefit it must always
be done without his interference ; he must be treated
somewhat as a dog to which one throws a bone from

22

322 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

time to time when it growls a little too loudly. Can we
attempt to perfect such an imperfectible being ? Besides,
has not the world long ago assumed its final form, as
regards political economy, morality, and even religion ?
What is the use of all this hankering after change ?

To sum up : among the Latin peoples at least, masters
and men form to-day two absolutely inimical classes, and
as both classes feel themselves to be absolutely incapable
of overcoming the difficulties of their daily relations by
themselves, they invariably appeal to the State, thus once
again to prove the irresistible need of the French people
to be governed, and its inability to conceive of society
otherwise than as a hierarchy of castes under the all-
powerful control of a master. Free competition, spon-
taneous association, and personal initiative are conceptions
which are inaccessible to our national spirit. Its ideal is
always the salaried functionary in his every manifesta-
tion, under the laws of a chief. This ideal no doubt
reduces the cost of the individual to the lowest level, but
it also demands a minimum of character and action. The
workman who cries out against his master could not do
without him. " Where should we get our bread then ? "
one of them asked me one day. And thus we return
once more to this fundamental fact — that the destinies
of a nation are controlled by its character, not by its
institutions.

CHAPTER III

THE CONFLICT OF PEOPLES AND CLASSES

I. The natural conflict of individuals and of species: — The universal con-
flict of creatures is a constant law of nature — It is the essential law of
progress — Nature is intolerant of weakness. 2. The conflict of peoples :
— The constant conflict of people against people since the beginning
of history — The right of the strongest has always been the arbiter of
their destinies — Why strength and right are identical — How a small
State may sometimes exist — The rights of nations are measured by
the strength they have at their disposal to defend them — How the
civilised nations apply the foregoing principles to the negroes — What
the dissertations of the theologians and philanthropists are worth —
Right and justice in international relations — Why international
struggles will probably be keener in the future than in the past. 3.
The struggle of the classes : — Its antiquity — Its necessity — Why, so far
from effacing itself, it can only increase — The useless attempts of
religions to suppress the struggle between the classes — The gulfs
which separate the classes are in reality far moi'e profound than
formerly — The programme of the Socialists — The reciprocal lack of
comprehension of the two parties opposed — The important part
played by error in history. 4. The future Socialistic struggles: —
The violence of the struggle against the Socialists — The struggle in
the United States — The difficulties which the old societies will
experience in defending themselves — ^The disintegration of their
armies.

I. The Natural Conflict of Individuals and of

Species.

THE only process that Nature has been able to dis-
cover for the amelioration of species is to bring
into the world far more creatures than she is able to
nourish, and to establish between them a perpetual
struggle in which only the strongest and the best adapted

324 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

can survive. This conflict takes place not only betvi^een
the different species, but also between the individuals of
the same species, and it is often between the latter that it
is most violent.

By this process of selection all creatures have been
slowly perfected since the beginning of the world ; by
this process' man has been evolved from the primitive
types of the geological periods and our savage ancestors
have slowly raised themselves to civilisation. From a
sentimental point of view this struggle for existence with
the survival of the fittest may appear to be extremely
barbarous. But we must remember that were it not for
this conflict we should still be miserably disputing an
uncertain prey with all the animals we have finally
subjected.

The struggle that Nature enforces on her creatures is
universal and constant. Wherever there is no conflict
there is not only no progress, but a tendency towards
rapid degeneration.

After showing us the conflict prevailing among all living
creatures, the naturalists have shown us that the same
conflict prevails in our own bodies.

" Far from lending themselves to a mutual harmony,"
writes M. J. Kunstler, "the different parts of the bodies of
living creatures seem, on the contrary, to be in perpetual
conflict with one another. Any development of one part
has, as its correlative consequence, a diminution of the
importance of the other parts. In other words, any part
that increases itself does so at the expense of other parts.

" Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire has already given a rough
sketch of this phenomenon in establishing his ' principle
of the equilibrium of the organs.' The modern theory
of phagocytosis does not add very much to this principle,
but it determines with greater clearness the process by
which the phenomenon is produced.

CONFLICT OF PEOPLES AND CLASSES 325

" Not only do the organs struggle with one another, but
all the parts of the body, no matter what they may be.
For example, this conflict is to be observed in the tissues,
between the various elements of the same tissue. The
evolution of the weaker elements is diminished or arrested,
it may be ruthlessly sacrificed for the benefit of the
stronger elements, which thereby become moi^e flourish-
ing.

" Events would seem to denote that living organisms
have only a determined quantity of evolutive power to
expend. If, by means of any artifice or accident, this
evolutionary force is directed to any one organ or process,
the other organs are rendered more or less stationary, or
may even recede. These facts, taken together, naturally
lead one to compare them with the observed results of the
law of primogeniture. When one of the children of a
family is favoured in the division of the paternal goods,
the share of the other children is by that fact diminished."

Nature exhibits an absolute intolerance for weakness.
All that is weak is promptly doomed to perish. She
respects only physical or intellectual strength. As in-
telligence is in strict relation to the amount of cerebral
matter the individual possesses, we see that the rights of
a living creature, in the eyes of Nature, are in close
relation to the capacity of its skull. By this alone has
man been able to arrogate to himself the right to kill the
lower animals. If the latter could be consulted they
would doubtless remark that the laws of Nature are very
afflicting. The only consolation to be offered them is
that Nature is full of other fatalities quite as afflicting.
With a more highly-developed nervous system the edible
animals would perhaps form a sort of trades-union, in
order to escape the butcher's knife ; but they would not
gain much by that. Left to themselves, no longer able
to rely on the interested and even very attentive cares of

326 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

their breeders, what would be their fate ? In countries
still virgin they might pick up a miserable livelihood in
the prairies, but there they would encounter the teeth of
the carnivora, and if they escaped them it would be only
for a slow death by hunger as soon as they became too
old to seek out and dispute their food with their fellows.

To the weak, however, Nature has given a certain
means of perpetuating themselves through the ages, in
spite of all their enemies, by endowing them with a
fecundity capable of tiring the appetite of all these
enemies. For instance, a female herring deposits more
than 60,000 eggs every year, so that a sufficient number
of herring always escape to assure the continuation of
the species. It would even appear that Nature has
brought as much vigilance to bear to assure the per-
petuity of the lowest species, the most obscure parasites,
as to assure the existence of the highest organisms. The
life of the greatest genius is not of more importance to
her than the existence of the most miserable microbe.
Nature is neither cruel nor kind. She thinks only of the
species, and remains indifferent^formidably indifferent —
to the individual. Our ideas of justice are unknown to
her. We may protest against her laws, but we have to
put up with her.

2. The Conflict of Peoples.

Has man succeeded in evading for his own part the
hard laws of nature to which all creatures must submit ?
Have the relations between one people and another been
a little softened by civilisation ? Has the struggle become
less bitter in the midst of humanity than between the
species ?

History teaches us the contrary. It tells us that the
nations have always been struggling, have always con-
tinued to struggle, and that since the beginning of the

CONFLICT OF PEOPLES AND CLASSES 327

world the right of the strongest has always been the
arbiter of their destinies.

This was the law of the past, and it is the law of the
present. Nothing denotes that it will not be the law of
the future also.

Not that there is to-day any lack of theologians and
philanthropists to protest against it. To them we owe
the numberless volumes in which they appeal, in eloquent
phrases, to right and to justice, a kind of sovereign
divinities who direct the world from the depths of the
skies. But the facts have always given the lie to their vain
phraseology. These facts tell us that. right exists only
when it possesses the necessary strength to make itself
respected. We cannot say that might is greater than
right, for might and right are identical. No right can
enforce itself without might. No one, I imagine, will
doubt that a country which should confide in right and
justice, and disband its army, would be immediately
invaded, pillaged, and enslaved by its neighbours. If
weak states such as Turkey, Greece, Portugal, Spain, and
China are still able to subsist, it is only on account of
the rivalry of the stronger states that wish to take pos-
session of them. Obliged to consider the sensibilities
of states as strong as themselves, the powerful states can
despoil the weaker only with prudence, and can assimi-
late their provinces only by fragments. In this manner
have Bosnia, Malta, Cyprus, and Egypt been stolen one
by one from the peoples who possessed them. As for
those countries that are practically without defence, the
powerful states have no scruples in invading their
territory.

No nation must forget to-day that its rights are exactly
limited by the forces at its disposal to defend those rights.
The sole acknowledged right of the sheep is to deliver up
its cutlets to beings possessing a greater skull than its

328 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

own. The sole recognised right of the negroes is to see
their country invaded and pillaged by the whites, and to
be shot down if they resist. If they do not resist they
are merely lightened of all their possessions, and then
made to work under the lash in order to enrich the
invaders. Such was the history of the natives of
America. Such is to-day the story of the inhabitants
of Africa. The negroes are now learning the penalty of
being weak. To please the philanthropists who write
books, a number of amiable orations on the unhappy lot
of these native populations are let loose before the shoot-
ing begins. This benevolence is even extended to the
sending of missionaries, whose pockets are bulging with
bibles and bottles of alcohol, in order to initiate them
into the benefits of civilisation. The negroes, whose
heads are thick, are not very ready to perceive the great-
ness of these benefits. It is, however, incontestable that
even though we do rob them and shoot them down
without scruple, we at least save them from the prospect
of being eaten by their own countrymen. I imagine,
however, that if their flesh had been more than indif-
ferent to the white man, they would not escape this
fate now any more than in the past. Then the destiny of
the negro would doubtless have been that of the ox,
when that pacific animal begins to fail at the plough.
When he became unable to work any longer he would
be sent to the slaughter-house after a previous fattening.
There would have been no lack of profound theologians
to thank the Creator that, after evidently having created
the ox to furnish men with beefsteaks, He took the
trouble to add the negro.

Leaving these foolish babblings of the theologians -and

r-s philanthropists on one side, we must recognise, as a

matter of daily observation, that human laws have been

utterly powerless to modify the laws of nature, and that

CONFLICT OF PEOPLES AND CLASSES 329

the latter continue to determine the relations of one
people with another. All theories of right and justice
are futile. International relations are to-day what they
have been since the beginning of the world, when
different interests are in question, or when it is merely a
matter of a nation wishing to enlarge itself. Right and
justice have never played any part in the relations of
nations of unequal strength. Be conqueror or conquered,
hunter or chased : such has always been the law. The
phrases of diplomatists and the sermons of orators
remind one of the civilities uttered by men of the
world when they have resumed their coats. The man
of the world will efface himself to let you pass, and will
ask with affectionate sympathy after your most distant
relations. But let any circumstance arise in which his
interests are concerned, and you behold these superficial
sentiments vanish on the instant. Then it is a matter
of each for himself, though he have to crush the women
and children who embarrass him under his heel, or stun
them with a cudgel, as at the ChariU Bazaar or at the
wreck of the Bourgogne. There are certainly exceptions,
brave men who are ready to sacrifice themselves for
their fellows, but they are so rare that they are regarded
as heroes, and their names are handed down to posterity.
We have very little reason to believe that the conflict
of people with people will be less violent in the future
than it has been in the past. On the other hand, there
are very good reasons for believing that it will be far
more violent. When nation was severed from nation by
distances that science had not learned to bridge over, the
causes of conflict were rare. To-day they are becoming
more and more frequent. Formerly international struggles
were provoked by dynastic interests or the whims of con-
querors. In the future the principal motives of inter-
natiorial conflict will be those great economic interests on

330 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

which the very lives of the nations depend, the importance
of which we have already seen. The approaching
struggles of the nations will be struggles for very life, and
will hardly be terminated but by the utter annihilation of
one of the combatants.

These are essential truths which it is in no one's interest
to conceal, and which it is very dangerous to wish to con-
ceal. I think it will be admitted as sufi&ciently evident
that one might have rendered the Spaniards a great service
in teaching them thoroughly, twenty-five years ago, that as
soon as they should be sufficiently weakened by their
interminable intestine quarrels any nation could profit by
the first pretext to seize on their colonies, and would succeed
without difficulty, in spite of the prayers of the monks and
the protection of madonnas. Then, perhaps, they would
have understood the utility of having fewer revolutions,
delivering fewer speeches, and organising their defences
in such a fashion as to prohibit the idea of attacking them.
A small nation can defend itself very well if sufficiently
energetic. Many nations are to-day devoting a third of
their Budgets to military expenses, and this price of assur-
ance against the aggressions of their neighbours would
certainly be less heavy if it were well employed.

3. The Struggle of the Classes.

The Collectivists attribute to their high priest Karl Marx
the statement of the fact that histqry is dominated by the
struggles of the different classes over matters of economic
interests, and also the assertion that this struggle must
disappear on account of the absorption of all classes in
one single class — the working class.

The first point, ihe struggle of the classes, is a banality
as old as the world. By the mere fact of the unequal
partition of wealth and power, caused by natural in-

CONFLICT OF PEOPLES AND CLASSES 331

equalities, or merely by social necessities, men have
always been divided into classes, of which the interests
were necessarily more or less exposed, and consequently
at war. But the idea that this struggle might cease is one
6f those chimerical conceptions that are completely con-
tradicted by the realities, and its realisation is very far
from being a desirable thing. Without the conflict of
individuals, races, and classes — in a word, without universal
conflict, man would never have emerged from savagery,
would never have attained to civilisation.

The tendency to conflict, which, as we have seen,
dominates the relations of the animal species and of men,
is also predominant in the relations of individuals and of
classes.

" We have only to look around us in the world in which
we live," writes Mr. Kidd, " to see that this rivalry which
man maintains with his fellows has become the leading
and dominant feature of our civilisation. It makes itself
felt now throughout the whole fabric of society. If we
examine the motives of our daily life, and of the lives of
those with whom we come in contact, we shall have to
recognise that the first and principal thought in the minds
of the vast majority is how to hold our own therein. . . .
The implements of industry prove even more effective and
deadly weapons than the sword."

And not only is there a struggle between the classes,
but between the individuals of the same class, and the
struggle between the latter, as in nature, is the most
violent.i xhe Socialists themselves, although now and

' This is very evident, since competition is scarcely possible except
between individuals of the same class : and on account of the
increasing number of the competitors, the competition is becoming
fiercer. The competitors put up with one another because they
cannot do otherwise, but the tenderest sentiment they entertain for
one another is a ferocious jealousy. The following description of
the salle de garde of medical students, recently published in a

332 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

then united for a common end, the destruction of our
present society, are unable to assemble together without
the most violent discord.

The struggle to-day is more violent than it has ever been
before, and this for many' reasons ; amongst others, for
this, that we have followed after chimeras of justice and
equality which are unknown to Nature. These empty
formulae have done and will do more ill to man than all
the ills which destiny has condemned him to suffer.

" There is no social justice," writes M. Bouge very
justly, "because Nature herself is not just. Injustice and
inequality are with us from the cradle.

" From the cradle to the grave, all through the course
of an existence of which she arbitrarily prolongs or
curtails the blessing or the burden, the inequality of
Nature follows man step by step.

" Inequality under a thousand forms ! Natural in-
equality, the chances of birth and inheritance, physical
advantages or disgrace, intellectual disparities, and the
inequalities of destiny. . . ."

Long before Socialism the religions had also dreamed
the dream of suppressing the struggle of people with
people, class with class, and individual, but what was the
result of their endeavour gave to make fiercer the very
struggles they wished to abolish ? Were not the wars

medical journal, clearly shows the nature of the sentiments that the
necessities of civilisation are steadily propagating in all classes ; —

" To-day the salle de garde has become orderly, but frigid and
taciturn. The medical student is no more the jolly companion of
old, ready to chum up with everybody ; he is frozen in his own
dignity, and imagines that the eyes of the world are on him. Each
student keeps guard over himself, and keeps his ideas to himself,
when he has any, for fear lest his neighbour should profit by them.
Thanks to the formidable prospect of the examinations, he shuts
himself jealously within himself. The comrade of to-day will be the
rival of to-morrow, and in the race for diplomas friendship must be
forgotten."

CONFLICT OF PEOPLES AND CLASSES 333

they provoked the cruellest of all, the most fruitful of
political and social disasters ?

Can we hope that with the progress of civilisation the
struggle of the classes will diminish ? On the contrary,
everything tends to show that it will become far more
intense than it has ever been in the past.

There are two reasons for this : the first is the more
and more profound division between the classes, the
second is the power which the new methods of associa-
tion give to the various classes to defend their demands.

The first reason can hardly be contested. The differ-
ences between the classes of men and masters, proprietors
and proletariats, for example, are visibly greater than the
old differences of caste, say the difference between the
people and the nobility. The distance created by birth,
it was then considered, could not be bridged over. It
was the result of the Divine will, and was accepted with-
out discussion. Violent abuses might sometimes give
rise to revolts, but the people revolted solely against the
abuses, and not against the established order of things.

To-day it is quite otherwise. The people revolt not
against the abuses, which were never less than at present,
but against the whole social system. At present Socialism
wishes to destroy the upper classes, simply to take their
place and to take possession of their wealth.

" Their end," says M. Boilley, " is soon stated ; they
wish, without preamble, to form a popular class which
shall expropriate the upper classes. They wish to launch
forth the poor man in pursuit of the rich, and the profit
account will be closed by the monopolising of the spoils
of the vanquished. Timour and Ghengis Khan led their
multitudes on the same quest."

These conquerors, it is true, had much the same motives,
but those whom they threatened with conquest knew
perfectly well that their only chance of salvation was by

334 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

defending themselves with energy, while to-day the adver-
saries of the new barbarians think of nothing but parleying
with them, and of prolonging their existence a little by a
series of concessions which do nothing but encourage
those who are gathering for the assault, and provoke their
contempt.

The struggles of the future will be aggravated by the
fact that they will not be inspired, as were the old wars
of conquest, by the desire to pillage an enemy who once
conquered became an object of indifference. To-day
furious hatred rages between the combatants, a hatred
which is gradually tending to assume a religious form,
and thus to acquire the special characteristics of ferocity
and insubordination which invariably animate a true
believer.

We have already perceived \one of the chiefest causes
of the present war of the classes in the extreme falsity of
the ideas which the opposing parties have formed of
one another. While studying the foundations of beliefs
we saw too clearly to what a degree the relations of being
with being are dominated by utter miscomprehension to
wonder at the impossibility of eliminating that factor.
The fiercest wars, and the religious struggles which have
stained the world with blood, and have done most to
change the face of civilisations and empires, >have very
often arisen from some such miscomprehension. Very often
it is the very falsity of an idea which constitutes its strength.
The most glaring error becomes, for the crowd, a radiant
truth, if it be sufficiently repeated. Nothing is easier to sow
than error, and when it has taken root it has the omnipo-
tence of the dogmas of religion. It inspires faith, and
nothing can stand against faith. In the Middle Ages half
of the West hurled itself on the East for the sake of the
most erroneous concepts ; by such errors the successors
of Mahomet established their gigantic empire ; by such

CONFLICT OF PEOPLES AND CLASSES 335

errors Europe was later on deluged with blood and fire. ■
The falsity of the parent ideas of these upheavals is to-day
evident to a child. To-day they are merely vague words,
of which the centuries have so exhausted the life that we
can no longer understand the power they once exercised.
None the less was this power irresistible, for there was
a time when the clearest reason, the most obvious
demonstrations, were powerless to prevail against it. It
is time only, and never reason, that has power to slay
phantoms.

The magical empire of lying words is not a thing of the
past. The soul of the people has changed, but its beliefs
are always as false as ever, and the words that sway it are
always as deceptive. Error, under new names, preserves
its ancient magic.

4. The Future Socialistic Struggles.

Made inevitable by the irresistible laws of Nature,
aggravated by the new conditions of civilisation, by the
miscomprehension which dominates the reciprocal rela-
tions of the classes, by the increasing divergency of their
interests, the conflict of the classes is destined to become
more violent than it has ever been at any period of the
world's history. The hour is approaching when the social
edifice will suffer the most redoubtable assaults that have
ever been made on it.

The new barbarians are threatening not only the pos-
sessors of wealth, but our very civilisation, which appears
to them merely the guardian of luxury, and a useless
complication.

Never have the maledictions of their leaders been so
furious ; never has any people whose gods and thresholds
were threatened by a pitiless enemy given vent to such
imprecations. The more pacific of the Socialists confine
themselves to demanding the expropriation of the upper

336 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

classes. The more ardent wish for their utter annihila-
tion. According to a sentiment expressed by one of
them at a meeting, and cited by M. Boilley, " the skins
of the infamous bourgeois will at least do to make
gloves of,"

As far as they can, these ringleaders suit the action to
the word. The list of crimes committed in Europe by
the advance-guard of Socialism during the last fifteen
years is very significant. Three sovereigns assassinated,
one of them an empress, and two others wounded ; six
prefects of police killed, and a considerable number of
deaths caused by explosions in palaces, theatres, dwelling-
houses, and railway stations. One of these explosions,
that at the Liceo Theatre at Barcelona, had eighty-three
victims ; that at the Winter Palace at St. Petersburg
killed eight persons, and wounded forty-five. The
number of journals in Europe that egg on the move-
ment is reckoned at forty. We may judge, from the
violence of these skirmishes, what a savage ferocity will
animate the struggle when it has become general.

Doubtless the past has seen struggles as violent, but
the conditions of the opposing forces were very different,
and the defence of society a much easier matter. Then
the crowd had no political power. It had not yet
learned how to associate itself and thus to form armies
which blindly obeyed the orders of absolute chiefs.
What association may do we learn from the last strike
in Chicago. It ended in the strike of all the railway men
in the United States, and had as its further results the
burning of the palaces of the Expo^ion and the immense
workshops of the Pulman Company. The Government
assumed the upper hand only by suspending civil rights,
proclaiming martial law, and delivering veritable battle
to the insurgents. The strikers were shot down without
pity, and defeated ; but we can imagine the hatred that

CONFLICT OF PEOPLES AND CLASSES 337

must fill the hearts of the survivors, among both the
vanquished workmen and the successful masters, whose
ruin the former had provoked by arson, pillage, and
massacre.

The United States would seem fated to furnish the
Old World with the first examples of the struggles which
will take place between intelligence, capacity, capital,
and the terrible army of the unfit of which I shall
presently speak, the social sediment which has been so
greatly increased by the modern development of industry.

The issue of the struggle in the United States will
doubtless be their division into a number of rival re-
publics. Their fate does not concern us ; it interests us
only as an example. This example will perhaps save
Europe from the complete triumph of Socialism ; that is
to say, from a return to the most shameful barbarism.

The social question will be singularly complicated in
the United States by the fact that the great republic is
divided into regions whose interests are very different,
and consequently conflicting. M. de Varigny has very
well presented this fact in the following lines : —

" Washington continues to be the neutral ground on
which political questions are decided, but it is not the
place in which these questions arise and affect American
life. The life of the nation is to be found elsewhere ; its
unity is not established, and it has no homogeneity.
Under the apparent union of a great people — and union
is not unity — there are profound divergencies, diverse
interests, and conflicting tendencies. They are only
emphasised by time ; they grow more evident as history
unrolls itself ; and they assert themselves in such facts
as the War of Secession, which brought the Union within
an inch of destruction.

" If we examine closely this vast republic, which Russia
and China alone surpass in extent of territory, and which

23

338 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

already ranks fifth in the world in respect of population,
we shall first of all be struck by this fact — that the
United States are divided into three sections by a geo-
graphical and commercial grouping ; the Southern States,
those of the North and West, and those of the Pacific ;
and already there are germs of division between the
North and the West. The various interests of these
groups result in incompatible demands, and for fifteen
years the politicians have been seeking, without discover-
ing, the means of making industries live and prosper
under a common tariff which in reality call for a special
regime. The South produces raw material, such as sugar
and cotton, the North is manufacturing, the West agri-
cultural, and the Paqific agricultural and mining. The
system of protection now in vogue is ruining the South,
embarrassing the West, and making the fortune of the
North, to which free trade would deliver a terrible
blow."

But we must not too closely forecast the fate of any
nation on a few general indications. Our destiny is still
concealed by the impenetrable mists of the future. It is
often possible to foresee the direction of the forces which
lead us, but it is futile to seek to define their effects or
discern their course. All that we can say is, that the
defence of the old societies will become very difficult.
The evolution of things has sapped the foundation of
the edifice of the past ages. The army, the last pillar of
the edifice, the only one that might yet sustairi it, has
entered on a process of disintegration, and its worst
enemies are now to be found in the educated classes.
Our ignorance of certain incontestable evidences of psy-
chology, an ignorance which will strike the historians of
the future with amazement, has led the greater number
of the European states almost entirely to renounce their
means of defence, by replacing the professional army,

CONFLICT OF PEOPLES AND CLASSES 339

such as England so rightly contents herself with, and
with which she dominates the world, by undisciplined
crowds, who are supposed to learn one of the most
difficult of professions in a few months. You have not
made soldiers of millions of men simply because you
have taught them drill. You have merely produced
mobs without discipline, resistance, or courage, more
dangerous for those who try to handle them than to
their enemies.'

The danger of these multitudes, from the point of
view of social defence, resides not only in their military
insufficiency, but in the spirit which animates them.
The professional armies formed a special caste, with
sentiments apart, strangers to everything that did not
interest them directly, and having nothing to look for
from outside. But these crowds who only pass sufficient
time in the army to suffer the tediousness of military life,
and to regard it with horror, what sentiments of caste are
they likely to have ? Taken from the workshop, the
factory, the dockyard, where they will promptly return,
of what value will they be in the defence of a social
order that they disdain, and incessantly hear attacked ?
This is the danger that the Governments do not yet see,
and on which it would consequently be quite useless to
insist. I doubt, however, if a single European State can
exist long without a permanent army, relying only
on universal compulsory service. Doubtless the latter

' I hope one day to enter more fully into these questions, in a
study of the psychology of war. It is plain that we cannot, for
reasons of a purely moral order, suppress the universal compulsory
service, which has the advantage of giving a little discipline to men
who are all but destitute of that quality ; but we might arrive at a
very simple compromise : reduce compulsory service to one year,
and maintain a permanent army of 200,000 to 300,000 men, formed
as in England of enlisted volunteers, who would make a military
career their profession.

340 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

satisfies our eager craving for a low equality, but is it
really admissible that the satisfaction of such a craving
should endanger the very existence of a race ?

The future will inform both nations and Governments
on this point. Experience is the only book that nations
can learn from. Unfortunately the reading of this book
has always cost them terribly dear.

CHAPTER IV

THE SOCIAL SOLIDARITY

I, Social solidarity and charity : — The fundamental difference between the
two — Charity is an anti-social and harmful sentiment — The most useful
works of solidarity have neither charity nor altruism as their base —
They are based on the association of similar interests — The movement
towards solidarity is one of the most important tendencies of modern
social evolution — The profundity of its causes — Association replaces
individual egoism, which is powerless, by a powerful collective egoism,
by which every one profits — Solidarity is at present the best arm of
the weak. 2. The modern forms of solidarity .-—It is possible only
between individuals having similar immediate interests — Co-operative
societies — Their development among the Anglo-Saxons — Why they
are unsuccessful among the Latins — Public companies — Their power
and utility — They must be made to penetrate into the popular classes
— Co-operative societies and their drawbacks — How the workers
might become proprietors of their workshops — Unions — Their utility,
their power, and their inconveniences — They are the necessary con-
sequence of modern evolution — Disappearance of the old familiar
relations between masters and men.

I, Social Solidarity and Charity.

THE struggle which, as we have just seen, is taking
place in the heart of society, brings together adver-
saries who are very unequally endowed. We shall see
how the weaker have been able, by associating their forces,
to render the warfare less unequal.

For many people the term " social solidarity " always
recalls, to some extent, the idea of charity. Its true sense,
however, is very different. The societies of the present
day are approaching solidarity of interests and relinquish-

341

342 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

ing charity. It is even very probable that the societies
of the future will regard charity as a low and barbarous
conception, altruistic in nothing but appearance, tho-
roughly egoistic in essence, and generally noxious.

The term solidarity signifies merely association, and by
no means charity or altruism. Charity is a noxious and
anti-social sentiment ; altruism is an artificial and im-
potent sentiment. When we examine the most useful
works of solidarity — instirance and mutual aid societies,
societies for gi-anting pensions, co-operative societies, &c.
— we find that they are never based on charity or altruism,
but simply on the combined interests of a number of
people who more often than not have never seen one
another. Having paid a certain annual subscription, the
subscriber receives a pension in proportion to this sub-
scription in the event of sickness or age. It is a matter
of privilege without benevolence, just as the man who
insures his property against fire has a right, in case of
fire, to the amount for which he has insured it. Of
course he profits by the collective subscriptions, since the
sum he receives is far greater than the sum he has paid,
but all the members of the collectivity may profit in the
same way, and he owes nothing to any man. He profits
by a privilege which he has bought, not by a favour, and
it is important to mark clearly the profound difference
between associations of interests which are based on
financial combinations guided by the calculation of
probabilities and the works of charity which are based
on the hypothetical good wishes and uncertain altruism
of a small number of individuals. Works, of charity have
no real social value, and are very justly rejected by a
large number of Socialists, who on this point are at one
with the most eminent thinkers. That there are such
institutions as hospitals and assistance bureaux, conducted
by the State at the public expense, we can only be thank-

THE SOCIAL SOLIDARITY 343

ful ; but charity on the whole is more harmful in practice
than useful. In default of an impossible amovint of
supervision it serves more often than not to support a
vi^hole class of individuals who merely exploit pity in
order to live in idleness. The obvious result is to prevent
a number of destitute people from working, as they find
the resources of charity more convenient and even more
productive, and to increase professional mendicity to
an enormous extent. The countless charitable associa-
tions for the assistance of the unemployed, or young
consumptives, or widows without resources, or deserted
Chinese infants, &c., &c., are at most only of use to afford
occupation for unemployed old ladies, or to idle men of
the world, who wish to obtain salvation at a cheap rate,
and are glad to occupy their leisure by becoming presi-
dents, secretaries, committee members, treasurers, &c., of
something or other. Thus they procure the illusion that
they have been of some use here below. And herein they
are very greatly mistaken.'

The movement in favour of solidarity, that is to say,
the association of similar interests, which is so generally

' Wishing to gain practical information on the possible utility of
these works of charity, and thus to be in a position to confirm by
experience what I had heard, I informed myself which was the most
important of them ; that which would theoretically appear to be the
most useful, since it is able, to all accounts, to procure immediate
employment to individuals out of work, which is already a great
advance on mere charity. Having paid my subscription as a
member, I took the simplest cases imaginable, and attempted to
obtain work for certain valid individuals who were temporarily un-
employed, and who were ready to content themselves with the lowest
salaries. Not one of them obtained a place, and I did not even
receive a reply. I then sent the same persons to the ordinary em-
ployment bureaux, which make no philanthropic pretensions, have
no great names on their lists, and have no other motives than
personal interest. In a few days my candidates obtained the modest
situations they desired. Private interest was thus far more effectual
than noisy and decorated philanthropy. I did not regret the small
sum thus expended in once more confirming a very elementary
truth.

344 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

evident, is perhaps the most definite of the new social
tendencies, and is probably one of those that will have
the greatest effect on our evolution. To-day the word
solidarity is heard far oftener than the old shibboleths of
equality and fraternity, and is tending to supplant them.
It is by no means synonymous. As the final object of
the association of interests is to struggle against other
interests, it is evident that solidarity is only a particular
form of the universal conflict of classes and individuals.
Understood as it is to-day, solidarity reduces our old
dreams of fraternity to the very closely circumscribed
limits of associations.

This tendency towards solidarity in the shape of
associations, a tendency which we see extending itself
every day, has various causes. The most important of
these is the abatement of individual will and initiative,
and the frequent uselessness of these qualities under the
conditions which have arisen from the modern develop-
ments of economics. The need of isolated action is
becoming rarer and rarer. It is almost impossible for
individual efforts to exert themselves to-day except
through the agency of associations, that is to say, by the
aid of collectivities.

A still profounder cause is impelling the modern man
to association. He has lost his gods, he sees his home
threatened, he no longer has faith in the future, and he
feels more and more the need of something to lean on.
Association replaces the impotent egoism of the individual
by a collective and powerful and collective egoism by
which every one profits. In default of classification by
the ties of religion, the ties of blood, the ties of politics,
and all the different ties which are every day growing
weaker, the solidarity of interests is able to unite men
with sufficient strength.

This kind of solidarity is almost the only means remain-

THE SOCIAL SOLIDARITY 345

ing to the weak, that is to say, to the greater number, by .
which they may struggle against the powerful, and be
not too greatly oppressed by them.

In the universal struggle whose laws we have already
traced the weaker are always defenceless before the
stronger, and the stronger do not hesitate to crush them.
Lords, feudal, financial, or industi-ial, have hitherto never
troubled much about those whom circumstances have
placed below them.

To this universal oppression, that neither religions nor
laws have hitherto been able to combat with stronger
weapons than empty words, the modern man has hitherto
found nothing to oppose but the principle of association,
which consolidates all the individuals of the same group.
Solidarity is the best arm that the weak possess in order
to efface to some extent the consequences of social
inequalities, and to render them a little less hard. Far
from being contradicted by natural laws, it has the merit
of being based on them. Science knows nothing of
liberty, or at least does not accept it in her own domain,
since she discovers everywhere phenomena ruled by an
inflexible determinism. Still less does she believe in
equality, for modern biology sees in the inequalities of
creatures the fundamental condition of their progress.
Neither will she accept fraternity, since merciless war
has been a constant phenomenon since the remotest
geologic periods. Solidarity, on the contrary, is not con-
tradicted by any known fact. Certain animals, and above
all the weakest, are only able to exist by a rigid solidarity,
which alone makes it possible for them to defend them-
selves against their enemies.

The association of the similar interests of the various
members of human societies is assuredly very ancient,
since it is to be found in our earliest records of history,
but in all ages it was always more or less hampered and

346 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

limited. It was barely possible on the narrow region of
economic and religious interests. The Revolution thought
to do a useful work in suppressing the corporations. No
measure could have been more disastrous to the demo-
cratic cause that the men of the Revolution thought they
were defending. To-day these abolished corporations
are everywhere reappearing under new names and new
forms. In the modern developments of industry, which
have considerably increased the division of labour, this
renaissance was inevitable.

2. The Modern Forms of Solidarity.

Now that we have clearly marked the difference be-
tween those solidarities which are based on combined
interests and those which repose on charity, let us take a
rapid glance at the various forms of modern solidarity.

It is at once evident that a solidarity between indivi-
duals does not exist simply because they are engaged in
a common work, the success of which depends on the
association of their efforts ; indeed, we very often find the
contrary. The director of a factory, his men, and his
shareholders, have theoretically a common interest in
working for the success of the concern on which their
existence or fortune depends. In reality this far-fetched
solidarity only covers very conflicting interests, and the
parties in contact are by no means actuated by reciprocal
sentiments of benevolence. The workman wants his
salary to be raised, which can be done only by reduc-
ing the shareholders' profits. The shareholders, on the
contrary, represented by the director, have every reason
to reduce the profits of the workmen in order to increase
their own ; so that the solidarity which theoretically
ought to exist between workmen, directors, and share-
holders has no real existence.

True solidarity is possible only between persons who

THE SOCIAL SOLIDARITY 347

have the same immediate interests. Such are the interests
that have called into being the modern institution of the
trades-union, which we shall presently examine.

There are, however, certain forms of association which
are able to consolidate interests that are naturally
conflicting. They associate the contrary interests of
producers and consumers by offering them reciprocal
advantages. The producer voluntarily contents himself
with a reduced profit on each article sold if the sale of
a large number of articles is assured to him, and this sale
is rendered certain by the association of a considerable
number of purchasers.

In the great English co-operative societies there are
only identical interests associated, as the consumer is at
the same time the producer, these societies producing
almost everything that they consume, and even owning
farms producing wheat, sheep and cattle, milk, vegetables,
and so forth. They present this very great advantage :
that the weaker and less capable members benefit by the
intelligence of the most capable, who are placed at the
head of these enterprises, which could not prosper without
them. The Latin countries have not arrived at this yet.

I have elsewhere shown that it is by themselves admini-
strating their various associations, and notably their co-
operative societies, that the Anglo-Saxon workers have
learned to manage their own affairs. The French work-
man is too deeply imbued with the Latin concepts of his
race to permit of his possession of the initiative necessary
to found and administer societies which would allow him
to ameliorate his lot. If, thanks to a few intelligent
leaders, he does sometimes found such a society, he
immediately confides its administration to second-rate
men of business, whom he treats with suspicion, and the
affair soon comes to grief.
These Latin societies, which are administered by

348 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

intermediaries indifferent to their success, are con-
ducted with the meticulous and complicated procedure
peculiar to our national temperament, and vegetate
miserably. An additional cause of their ill success is
that the Latin workman, having little foresight, will buy
his provisions from day to day at retail, from small shop-
keepers, with whom he gossips, and who very willingly
give him credit, for which he has to pay dearly, rather
than of the large stores at which he must pay ready
money, and where he cannot talk half the day over a
purchase. It would, however, be greatly to his interest
to rid himself of intermediaries by means of co-operative
societies. The sum paid in one year in France to the
middlemen, who separate the producer from the con-
sumer, has been reckoned at more than ;^28o,ooo,ooo, or
twice the amount we pay in taxes. The exactions of the
middleman are far more severe than those of the capitalist,
but the workman does not see them, and in consequence
supports them without a murmur.

The most widespread of modern forms of association,
and at the same time most anonymous, is the public
company. As M. Leroy-Beaulieu says very truly, it is
"the ruling trait of the economic organisation of the
modern world. . . . Industry, finance, commerce, and
even agriculture, and colonial enterprises — it extends to
everything. It is already in almost every nation the
habitual instrument of the mechanical production and
the exploitation of the forces of nature. . . . The anony-
mous company seems to be called on to become the-
ruler of the world ; it is the true heir of the old feudal
system and the fallen aristocracy. It will be the emperor
of the world ; for the hour is approaching when the world
will be issued in shares." It is, as our author says further,
a product not of wealth, but of the democracy, and the
dissemination of capital in many hands.

THE SOCIAL SOLIDARITY 349

Exploitation by shares is, in fact, the only form of
association possible to small capitalists. It constitutes
Collectivism in appearance, but only in appearance, for it
is a Collectivism which one may enter freely, and leave
freely, and the profit is strictly proportioned to the effort,
that is to say, to the sum of little economies which each
individual brings to it. On the day when the workman
becomes the proprietor, anonymous but interested, of the
shop in which he works, by means of the system of shares,
an immense advance will have been accomplished. It is
perhaps only by this method that the economic emancipa-
tion of the workman will ever take place — if it ever does
take place — and by which the natural and social inequali-
ties of man may be to some extent effaced.

Hitherto the public company has not penetrated so far
as the popular classes. The only mode of association
approaching to the public company (though in reality
very unlike it) known to the people, is the system of
profit-sharing. Many societies founded on this principle
have succeeded very well. If there are not very many
such societies it is because the proper organisation of
such enterprises demands very superior and therefore
always rare capacities.

I may mention as the oldest and most remarkable of
these associations the association of painters founded in
1829 by Leclaire, and continued by Redouly et Cie of
Paris ; the factory of Guise in Aisne ; that of Laecken in
Belgium, &c. The first divides 25 per cent, of the profits
among its members, who are all workmen, and after a
certain number of years gives them a pension of _^6o.
There are now 920 of these pensions.

The Guise factory is a kind of community, in which
the association of capital and labour have produced
excellent results. In 1894 it did business to the extent
of more than ;^20o,ooo, and made a profit of nearly
^30,000.

350 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

There are now more than 300 estabHshments of this
kind in France and abroad.

The most celebrated of these societies in England is
that of the Equitable Pioneers of Rochdale, which was
founded in 1844 by an association of twenty-eight work-
men who possessed a little capital. In 1891 it counted
12,000 associates and a capital of ;^36o,ooo. It does
business to the extent of about ;^3oo,ooo, and yields an
annual profit of ^^5 2,000.

Associations of this kind have had as great a success in
Belgium ; notably the Woruit at Ghent. There are also
many very prosperous concerns of the same kind in
Germany. A certain number have been founded in
northern Italy in the last few years, but there, as in
France, they will perish for want of proper management.
Their organisation is altogether Latin in character, which
means that their fate will depend entirely on the indi-
viduals placed at their head, as the members have neither
the capacity nor, so far as that goes, the intention to
administer them themselves as the Anglo-Saxon work-
men do.

The great danger of these societies is that the sharing
of profits necessarily implies the sharing of losses, which
are and must be frequent in industry. As long as there
is a profit the associates are perfectly at one, but as soon
as there is a loss the harmony, as a general thing, is quickly
broken. America has recently furnished us with a very
striking proof of this. The destruction by fire of the
gigantic establishment of the Pulman Company, and the
acts of savage vandalism and pillage which followed,
shows us plainly what becomes of these great enterprises
when they are no longer attended with success.

The Pulman Company had built enormous factories
occupying 6,000 men, and a charming town for the latter
and their families. This town counted 13,000 inhabitants,

THE SOCIAL SOLIDARITY 351

and was provided with every modern comfort, a large
park, theatre, library, &c. The houses could be acquired
only by the workmen, who became proprietors by paying
a small annual sum.

As long as affairs were in full swing peace and abun-
dance reigned. The men had deposited nearly ^^160,000
in the savings banks in a few years.

But the orders lessened on account of the reduced
profits of the railway companies, the customers of the
company, so that the latter, in order not to work at a loss
by employing all their men, were obliged to cut down
their wages from 9s, 2d. a day to 6s. 3d. A veritable
revolution followed. The workshops were pillaged and
burnt, and the workers determined on a strike which
spread to the railways and led to such scenes of violence
that President Cleveland was obliged to proclaim martial
law. The revolt was finally brought to an end by firing
on the strikers.

I have little faith in these profit-sharing societies, which
place the man too much at the mercy of his master, and
bind him to that master for too long a time. The master
has no real interest in sharing his profits with the men,
since it is certain that they will always refuse to share in
the losses also, and will revolt as soon difficulties appear.
Moreover, it is only out of sheer philanthropy that a
master consents to share his profits with his men. Nothing
can force him to do so. It is possible to found a durable
institution on interest, which is a solid and unchanging
sentiment, but not on philanthropy, which is a fluctuating
and always ephemeral sentiment. Philanthropy, too, is
too like pity to inspire any gratitude in its objects. I
imagine that Mr. Pulman, before his burning factories,
must have acquired those valuable ideas of the value of
philanthropy which are not to be learned from books,
and yet the ignorance of which often costs so dear.

352 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

The only possible form of profit-sharing which abso-
lutely respects the interests of both master and man, and
which makes them independent of one another, is profit-
sharing by means of shares, which implies participation
in the losses as well as in the gains, and is the only equi-
table and therefore acceptable arrangement. The £i
share is within the reach of every purse, and I am
amazed that no factories have yet been started in which
the shareholders will be solely workmen. When once
the workman shall be thus transformed into a capitalist
interested in the success of his business, his present
demands will have no raison d'etre, since he will be
working solely for himself. The workman who should
wish for any reason to change his workshop would
merely sell his shares like any other shareholder in
order to regain his liberty. The only difficulty would
arise in finding the men capable of directing the factory,
but experience would soon teach the workers the value of
these capable men, and the necessity of securing them by
paying them at a suitable rate.

I gave a few hints on this subject a long time ago in
one of my books. This book recently falling into the
hands of a Belgian engineer, M. Bourson, who is occupied
in industrial matters, he was struck with the practical
utility of my idea, and wrote to me that he was going to
attempt to realise it, I sincerely hope he will succeed.
The great difficulty, evidently, resides in the subscription
of the necessary capital, which cannot be demanded from
men without any money. The only method that I can
see is to sell in part or in totality an already existing
factory to the workmen employed in it, as it might be
sold to ordinary shareholders, but so that the workmen
might acquire it gradually. Let us, for example, suppose
that the proprietor of a factory wished to convert his
business into a company, as many do nowadays. Hitherto,

THE SOCIAL SOLIDARITY 353

we will say, he has always paid his men 5s. 6d. a day.
He will now pay them only 4s. gd. or 4s. 6d. a day, and
the deficit will be entered to the account of each hand
until the total of the amounts held back amounts to £1,
the price of a share. This share will be registered in the
name of the workman, who may draw the dividend at will,
but is not permitted to sell before the lapse of a certain
number of years, so as to preserve him from the tempta-
tion of parting with it. In this manner the workman
will soon become the holder of a more or less con-
siderable number of shares, of which the dividends will
soon repay him for the reduction of his salary, and
will afford him an income in his old age. He will thus
have become a proprietor without any intervention on
the part of the State. The moral effect thus obtained
would be of even greater value than the material advan-
tages of such a system. The workman would properly
regard the factory as a personal property, and wotild be
interested in its success. By attending the meetings of
shareholders he would learn first to understand and then
to take a part in the discussion of matters of business.
He would soon understand the part played by capital,
and the interplay of economic necessities. Having become
a capitalist he would no longer be a mere labourer.
Finally, he would emerge from his narrow sphere, his
limited horizon. The present antagonism of capital and
labour would gradually be replaced by alliance. The
interests at present in conflict would be fused. The man
of action and brains who should preach by example and
be the first to realise this idea might be regarded as one
of the benefactors of humanity.

There is yet one more form of association to be
examined, a form born of the necessities of the period,
already possessed of great power, and destined to obtain
yet more. I am speaking of leagues or unions, which

24

354 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

group together, in a momentary or permanent fashion,
individuals having the same interests or following the
same profession.

This form of association, which is new to the Latin
peoples, is already long familiar to such peoples as the
Anglo-Saxons, peoples who have long rejoiced in liberty,
and who know how to depend on themselves and to help
themselves.

"Here," said Taine, speaking of England, "if a man
has a good idea he communicates it to his friends. It
appears good to many of them. They subscribe money,
publish the idea, and summon around them sympathies
and subscriptions. The sympathy and the subscriptions
arrive ; the publicity of the idea increases. The snowball
begins to grow ; it strikes against the doors of Parliament,
and opens them, or melts away. This is the English
mechanism of reforms ; this is how the English manage
their own affairs ; and you must understand that all over
the soil of England there are little snowballs in process
of growth."

It is by associations of this kind, such as the Corn
League of Cobden, that the English have obtained their
most useful reforms. They enforce their desires on Par-
liament so soon as it becomes evident that they are the
expression of a popular desire.

It is evident that no isolated individual, however in-
fluential, can obtain as much as can be obtained by an
association representing numerous collective interests.
M. Bonvallot has shown what may be obtained by a
league of individuals with collective interests.

"The Touring Club, which counts more than 70,000
members, at the present time, is a power. Not only
has the Touring Club provided cyclists with road maps,
itineraries, reduced hotel tariffs, and assistance depots,
but it has also awakened the terrible administration of

THE SOCIAL SOLIDARITY 355

the Bridges and Roads department, and has provided
roads on which it is possible to cycle. It has made the
redoubtable railway companies capitulate ; it has turned
the crusty customs officials into obliging fellows, and has
made the crossing of the frontier a pleasure,"

The Touring Club was founded without any difficulty,
since each member, by paying his very modest subscrip-
tion, obtained the protection of a powerful association, of
which he felt the need every day, and which would repay
his subscription a hundred times over in the services it
would render him. But I doubt if any analogous associa-
tion could have in France, as in England, for its end,
an important reform of general interest — an educational
reform, for instance. If my worthy friend Bonvallot
could succeed in organising a league for the reform of
education which should number only a tenth of the
members of the Touring Club, he would be able to
boast of having rendered an enormous service to his
country.

We must recognise that hitherto the working classes
have profited most intelligently by such associations, and
we cannot too greatly admire the results of their efforts.
They have obtained their present power not by the
universal suffrage, but by their trades-unions. These
unions have become the arm of the weak and obscure,
who are thereby able to meet the greatest princes of
industry and finance on an equal footing. Thanks to
these unions the relations between the employers and the
employed are tending to be completely transformed. The
employer is no longer the vaguely paternal autocrat,
administrating all questions of labour without discussion,
governing whole populations of workers at will, and regu-
lating the conditions of labour, questions of sanitation
and hygiene, &c. His will, his whims, his weaknesses
and his errors are to-day confronted by the trades-union,

3S6 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

which by number and unanimity represents a power
almost equal to his own : a despotic power, no doubt,
to its members, but a power which on ceasing to be
despotic would cease to be.

Trades-unions would seem to be a very necessary con-
sequence of modern evolution, to judge by their rapid
propagation. To-day there is not a single calling, from
the school-teacher's to the charcoal-burner's and the
scavenger's, which has not its union. The employers
are naturally forming defensive unions in turn, but while
in France there are 1,400 employers' unions, with 114,000
members, there are 2,000 trades-unions with more than
400,000 members. There are unions, such as the railway-
employes' union, which count more than 80,000 members.
These are all-powerful armies, obeying the voice of their
chiefs without discussion, with which it is absolutely
necessary to come to terms. They constitute a power
which is often blind, but always formidable, and which
in every case is of immense service to the workers, be
it only by raising their moral standard by transforming
them from timid mercenaries into men who must be
respected and encountered on an equal footing.

The Latin peoples, unfortunately, have highly autocratic
tendencies, so that their unions are often as despotic as
ever their masters could have been. The lot of the latter
is at present far from enviable. The following lines, from
a speech of a some-time minister, M. Barthou, gives one
some idea of their state : —

" Threatened incessantly by the laws which uphold the
liberty of union, exposed to legal brutalities and to im-
prisonment, having no effective authority over their men,
overburdened with the expenses of maintaining the funds
to provide for enforced idleness, accident, sickness, and
old age, which he no longer dares to charge to the wages
sheet on account of their very hugeness, which would

THE SOCIAL SOLIDARITY 357

provoke a popular rising, hampered still more by the
steadily increasing taxation of the fortune gained in
spite of all these difficulties and humiliations, no longer
masters in anything but in name, and gaining nothing
thereby but misfortune and a hundred risks, the masters,
the industrial leaders, will renounce their position, will
abdicate, or at most will continue to struggle without
spirit and without courage, and will fail at their task like
the tax-gatherers of the last centuries of the Roman
Empire."

Doubtless the relations between men and masters, so
strained and embittered as they are to-day, will finally be
ameliorated by a force stronger than all institutions —
necessity. The Latin workman, who at present treats
his master as an enemy, will finally comprehend, with
the Anglo-Saxon Workman of whom I have spoken else-
where, that the interests of the men and the masters are
of the same order, and that both are subject to the same
master, the public, the sole arbiter of wages.

At all events, the old relations, whether familiar or
autocratic, between employers and employed, masters
and servants, are to-day done with. We may regret
them, but only as we regret the dead, knowing well that
we shall never behold them again. In the future evolu-
tion of the world the mind will be ruled by interests, not
by sentiments. Pity, charity, and altruism are the sur-
vivors, without prestige and without influence, of the past
that is dying before our eyes. The future will no longer
know them.

CHAPTER V

THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM OF SOCIALISM : THE
UNADAPTED

I. The imiltiplication of the unadaptcd : — Definition of the unadapted — ^The
conditions which are now making for their multiplication — The un-
adapted of art, science, and industry — The danger of their presence in
society — How the present evolution of industry is every day increasing
their number — Competition among the unadapted — The consequence
of this competition is the lowering of wages in the easy trades — It is
practically impossible to find a remedy for this — The gradual elimina-
tion of the incapable from all industries — Various examples. 2. The
unadapted through degeneracy: — The fecundity of degenerates — The
present and future dangers of degeneracy— The importance of the
problem raised by their presence in society — Degenerates are certain
recruits for Socialism. 3. The artificial production of the unadapted :
— The artificially produced unadapted through incapacity — They are
produced largely by our Latin system of education — Education, which
was intended to be a universal panacea, has ended in creating an
immense host of diclassis — Impossibility of utilising the army of
unemployed bachelors and licentiates — Anti-demoa-atic sentiments of
the university — The illusions regarding the instruction it affords — The
considerable part played by the university in the social upheavals that
are preparing.

I. The Multiplication of the Unadapted.

AMONG the most important characteristics of our age
we must mention the presence, in the midst of
society, of a number of individuals who, for one reason or
another, have been unable to adapt themselves to the
necessities of modern civilisation, and are unable to find a
place therein. They form a superfluity which cannot be
utilised. They are the unadapted.

358

FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM OF SOCIALISM 359

All societies have always possessed a certain number of
these individuals, but never was their number so great as
it is to-day. Unadapted to industry, science, the trades,
and the arts, they form an ever-increasing army. Not-
withstanding their diversity of origin, they are united by
one common sentiment — the hatred of the civilisation in
which they can find no place. Every revolution, no
matter what end it pursue, is certain to find them hasting
to join it at the first signal. It is among them that
Socialism recruits its most ardent soldiers.

Their immense numbers, and their presence in every
strata of society, renders them more dangerous to modern
society than were the Barbarians to the Roman Empire.
Rome was for a long time able to defend herself against
the invaders from without ; but the modern barbarians
are within our walls. The Barbarians of antiquity envied
the power of Rome, but they respected it. They might
dream of setting themselves up in her place, of speaking
in her name, but down to her last days the great city
possessed the same prestige in their eyes. Clovis was
prouder of his title of Roman Consul than of his title of
King of the Franks.

The nations who disputed the succession of the Roman
Empire were one and all anxious to maintain it to their
own profit. Our new barbarians, on the contrary, will
have nothing less than the destruction of the civilisation
of which they believe themselves to be the victims. They
aspire to its destruction, and not to a conquest, of which
they would not know how to avail themselves. If they
did not burn Paris completely at the time of the Commune
it was only because their means were at fault.

We need not inquire how this residue of the unadapted
comes to be formed at every degree of the, social scale.
It will suffice to show that the evolution of industry has
contributed to a rapid increase in their number. The

36o THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

statistics given in a previous chapter denoted the steady
rise of the wages of the working classes, and the increasing
distribution of wealth among the lower classes, but this
amelioration is general only in the middle class of
workers. What of those whose natural incapacities place
them below this average level ? From the brilliant
picture of general amelioration we have just been con-
sidering we must turn to one that is very gloomy
indeed.

Under the old system of corporations the trades were
subjected to regulations which limited the number of
workers and prevented competition. The inconveniences
of inferiority were not too pronounced. The member of
a corporation did not rise very high, but neither did he
sink very low. He was not an outcast, a nomad. The
corporation was his family ; he was never at any time
alone. in life. His situation might not be very brilliant,
but at least he was sure of finding a place for himself, a
cell in the social hive.

With the economic necessities which dominate the
modern world, and competition, the present law of pro-
duction, things have suffered a profound change. As M.
Cheysson very justly observes : " The ancient cements
which held society together being dissolved, the grains
of sand of which it is composed go to-day each its
own way. Any man who develops, in the struggle for
life, any superiority over his surroundings, will rise as a
balloon filled with a light gas rises in the air when there
is no rope to check its ascent ; and every man who is
morally or materially deficient will inevitably fall headlong
if no parachute govern his descent. It is the triumph
of individualism, freed from servitude, but destitute of
guidance."

In the present period of transition, those who are
unadapted through incapacity can hardly manage to live.

FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM OF SOCIALISM 361

however miserably. It would seem as though their
misery, already so profound, were inevitably bound to
increase. Let us consider why.

To-day, in every branch of industry or of art, the most
capable advance very quickly. The less capable, finding
the best places taken, and being able, by their very in-
capacity, to produce only inferior work, are obliged to
offer this work, of very easy execution, at very low prices.
But in the region of incapacity competition is far keener
than in the region of capacity, since the first is far more
populous than the second, and since easy work finds
more to execute it than difficult work. The consequence
is that the unadapted person is reduced, in order to gain
preference over his rivals, still further to lower the price
he demands for what he can perform. The employer,
on his side, who pays for these indifferent productions,
which are destined for a numerous but by no means
difficult clientele, naturally tends to pay as little as possible,
in order to sell his wares cheaply, and so still further
to increase the number of his customers. The price
of the worker thus descends to that extreme limit
below which, the victim at once of his own insuffi-
ciencies and of economic necessities, he would die of
starvation.

This system of competition among the unadapted
engaged in easy work is what the English represent by a
just and forcible phrase — the "sweating system."

" The sweating system," says M. des Rouziers, " has
matters all its own way, wherever individuals without
sufficient capacity are producing on their own account
ordinary articles of inferior quality.

" The sweating system takes a multitude of forms ; the
tailor who, instead of executing his orders in his own
establishment, gives them out at low prices, is practising
sweating, and so is the large shop which gives sewing to

362 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

poor women who are kept in their own homes by the
cares of their households and children."

All the ordinary articles sold in the dressmaking,
outfit, and furniture departments are to-day produced at
miserable prices by the sweating system. Corset makers,
waistcoat hands, shoemakers, shirtmakers, &c., often earn
no more than is. to is. 3d. a day, and furniture hands can
scarcely make 2s. 6d. a day. Nothing could be sadder than
such a fate, but nothing could be heavier than the chain
of necessities which make it inevitable. Are we to blame
the employer who pays these wretched wages ? By no
means, for the employer is under the thumb of a sovereign
master, on whom he is utterly dependent — his clientele.
If he pays higher wages he must immediately increase by
a few halfpence the price of the shirt which he sells at
two shillings, the pair of shoes which he sells at four
shillings, and immediately his customers will leave him
to go to a neighbour who sells his wares at the lower
price. Shall we suppose that all the employers unite to
raise the rate of wages ? But then the market will be
at once inundated with the wares of foreigners who are
still working at low wages, which would make the lot of
the unadapted more unhappy than before.

The victims of these fatalities thought to find a simple
remedy for their ills in establishing, by means of their
trades-unions, a fixed i-ate of wages below which no
employer could go without finding himself deserted by
all his workers. They were helped in their claims by
the minimum rates fixed by the municipalities of the large
towns, at which the undertakers of public works are for-
bidden to employ their workers.

These fixed rates of wages and municipal tariffs have
hitherto been more hurtful than useful to those they were
intended to protect, and have been of little value save in
showing the powerlessness of legislation in the face of

FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM OF SOCIALISM 363

economic necessities. In a few old-established industries
which demanded complicated or costly implements or
very skilful workers, the employers agreed to the terms of
the unions. In the case of the other industries, which
demanded neither complicated plant nor such skilled
labour, the difficulty was soon surmounted, and entirely
in the favour of the employer. I will take the case of
the furniture industry in Paris, chosen from innumerable
analogous cases. Formerly the employers used to employ
their hands in their own workshops. As soon as the
unions made known their demands the masters dismissed
three-quarters of their men, only retaining the most
capable for urgent jobs or repairs. The workman was
obliged to work at home, and as he had no customer but
his employer, he was obliged to offer what furniture he
made to him. But now it was the employer's turn to
dictate conditions. On accoun^t of French and foreign
competition the prices of furniture had fallen by one-half,
and the workman of average capacity who was formerly
able to earn 6s. or 7s. in a day in the workshop, is now
with difficulty able to earn 2s. 6d. or 3s. 6d. a day by
working at home. The employer has thereby learned how
to evade the Socialistic demands. The public has gained
thereby in being able to buy furniture — of inferior quality,
it is true — at very low prices. The workman, in exchange
for his ruin, has been able at least to acquire this notion,
that the economic necessities which rule the world are
not modified either by legislation or by trades-unions.

As for the contractors who are obliged to accept the
tariffs imposed by the municipalities, they have got out
of the difficulty in a similar fashion, by employing none
but the most capable workmen, that is to say, precisely
those who have no need of any protection, since their
capacity insures their receiving the highest salaries every-
where. The obligatory tariffs have merely compelled the

364 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

contractors to eliminate the mediocre workers, whom they
formerly employed in work of secondary importance,
ill-paid, no doubt, but still paid. In short, the very
measures which were designed to protect those workers
who by reason of their inferior capacities required pro-
tection have turned against them, and have had the sole
result of rendering their situation far more difficult than
before.

The great lesson to be learnt from all this is that which
is indicated by M. des Rouziers in his remarks on the
sweating system : " No one can dispense with the
workman of intrinsic value."

This, in fact, is the clearest result of the competition
^et up by the modern economic necessities. Everywhere
it makes the most capable triumph, and eliminates the
less capable. This formula is precisely the law of selec-
tion, whence derives the perfection of species in the
whole series of living creatures, and from which man
has as yet been unable to escape.
~ The capable have everything to gain from this compe-
tition ; the incapable can only lose by it. We can thus
readily imagine that the Socialists wish for its suppression ;
but even supposing that they could destroy it in the
countries in which they had gained the mastery, how
could they destroy it in the countries where they had no
influence, the countries whose products, despite all pro-
tective duties, would immediately invade the market ?

We saw, while considering the commercial struggles
between the East and the West, and between the Western
nations themselves, that competition is an inevitable law
of the present age. It exists absolutely everywhere, and
all the checks that one attempts to impose on it only
make matters worse for its victims. It enforces itself
whenever there is a question of ameliorating any branch
of labour whatever, whether scientific or industrial,

FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM OF SOCIALISM 365

whether of private or public interest. The following
example, which occurred under my own eyes, shows at
once the necessity of competition and the results.

A friend of mine, an engineer, was appointed to the
head of an important enterprise, supported by the
Government, which consisted in reniaking, with great pre-
cision, the map of a country. He was left perfectly free
to choose his employes, and to pay them what he willed,
on the sole condition that he was not to exceed the
annual sum which was allowed him for that purpose.
The sum being little enough, and the employes many,
the engineer started by dividing the sum equally between
them. Finding that the work was being done slowly and
indifferently, he decided to pay his employes solely by
the piece, by devising means of automatic control which
allowed him to verify the value of the work executed.
Each capable employe soon began to do three or four
times as much work as the work of three or four ordinary
employes, and earned more than twice his previous
salary. The incapable or semi-capable employes, being
unable to make enough to live on, eliminated themselves,
and in less than two years the allowance made by the
State, which at first was hardly sufficient, exceed the
expenses by 30 per cent. Thus the State, by this opera-
tion, obtained better work at a less expense, and the
capable employes saw their salaries doubled. Every one
was satisfied, except of course the incapable workers who
had been eliminated by their incapacity. This result,
which was a very happy one both for the progress of the
work and for the public finances, was evidently a very
unhappy one for the inefficient employes. However
great may be our sympathy for the latter, can we say that
the general interest should have been sacrified to them ?

The reader who enters into this question will quickly
perceive the difficulty of one of the most important social

366 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

problems, and the impotence of the means proposed by
the Socialists to solve it.

2. The Unadapted through Degeneracy,

To the class of outcasts produced by competition we
must add the hosts of degenerates of all kinds — alcoholic,
tuberculous, &c. — who are preserved by modern medical
science. It is precisely these individuals that form
almost the only class that abandons itself without check
to the most disturbing fecundity, confirming the law I
have expounded, that in the present period societies
perpetuate themselves above all by their lowest elements.

We are aware of the progress of alcoholism through
all Europe. Drink-shops are rapidly multiplying them-
selves everywhere, as much in France as in other
countries.^ I can by no means interest myself in the
lamentations of the doctors and statisticians on this point :
firstly, because their lamentations are evidently useless ;
and, secondly, because the public-house is absolutely the
only distraction of millions and millions of poor devils ;
it is their sole means of illusion, and the only centre of
sociability at which many and many a gloomy life is
illumined for a moment. They have been forbidden the
church ; what would be left them if they were deprived
of the public-house ? The consumption of alcohol is
first of all an effect ; then it becomes a cause. And it is
only in excess that alcohol is hurtful. If the mischief
caused by the excessive drinking of alcohol is serious, it
is because it compromises the future by the hereditary
degeneracy which it causes.

The danger of all these degenerates — rickety, epileptic,
insane, &c. — lies in the fact that they multiply in excess,

' There were 350,000 in 1850, 364,000 in 1870, 372,000 in 1881,
430,000 in 1891, of which 31,000 were in Paris.

FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM OF SOCIALISM 367

and produce a crowd of individuals who are too inferior
to adapt themselves to civilisation, and who are conse-
quently its inevitable enemies.

"We give life to-day," writes M. Schera, "to a host of
creatures that Nature has condemned ; sickly, lingering,
half-dying infants ; and we regard it as a great victory
that we have thus been able to prolong their days, and
this altogether modern preoccupation of society on the
subject we regard as a great progress. . . . But this is
the irony of the matter. These devoted and ingenious
cares which give so many human beings to society do
not present them to society sane, healthy, and vigorous,
but infected with vices of blood which they contracted at
birth ; and as neither our customs nor our laws can
prevent these people from marrying, they still inevitably
transmit the poison. Hence there must evidently arise
an alteration of the general health, a contamination of
the race."

Dr. Salomon has cited a very striking example of the
kind of case that is met with every day. It is that of the
offspring of the union of a di^unkard with an epileptic.
There were twelve children, every one of them either
consumptive or epileptic.

" What is to be done with such lamentable creatures ? "
asks Dr. Salomon, " and would it not have been a thou-
sand times better if none of them had ever seen the
light ? And what an expense such families are to society,
to the budget of public assistance, and even the budget
of the criminal courts ! Hospital inmate or gaol-bird :
the child of the drunkard can hardly aspire to be any-
thing else. Multiply the hospitals and the police ; this,
it seems, must be the future of civilised societies, which
will finally perish through this state of things, if fecundity
becomes the special characteristic of those for whom
sterility is an absolute duty."

368 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

Many other writers, and among them the most emi-
nent, have been preoccupied with this difficult problem.
This is what Darwin has to say on the subject :—

"With savages the weak in body or mind are soon
eliminated ; and those that survive commonly exhibit a
vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other
hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination ;
we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the
sick ; we institute poor-laws, and our medical men exert
their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last
moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has
preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution
would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the
weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind.
No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic
animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to
the race of men. It is surprising how soon a want of
care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration
of a domestic race ; but excepting in the case of man
himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his
worst animals to breed."

We cannot deny that if a benevolent deity were to
suppress in every generation the increasing army of the
degenerates which we so carefully protect he would be
rendering an immense service to civilisation and to the
degenerates themselves ; but since our humanitarian
sentiments demand that we should preserve them and
favour their reproduction we can but suffer the con-
sequences of these sentiments. At all events we know
that all these degenerates, as John Fiske justly remarks,
constitute an element of inferior vitality, comparable to a
cancer implanted in healthy tissues, and all their efforts
tend to abolish a civilisation which inevitably results in
their own misery. They are, in fact, certain recruits for
Socialism. As we advance in our study of the question

FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM OF SOCIALISM 369

we see of what varied and dangerous elements the
multitude of the disciples of the new faith is composed.

3. The Artificial Production of the Unadapted.

To the host of the unfit created by competition and
degeneration must be added, as regards the Latin
nations, the degenerates produced by artificial incapacity.
These artificial failures are made at great expense by our
colleges and universities. The host of graduates, licen-
tiates, instructors, and professors without employment
will one day, perhaps, constitute one of the most serious
dangers against which society will have to defend itself.

This class of artificial outcasts is of quite modern
formation. Its origin is psychological ; it is the conse-
quence of the modern ideas.

The men of each period live by a certain number of
political, religious, or social ideas, which are regarded as
indisputable dogmas, of which they must necessarily
suffer the effects. One of the most powerful of such
ideas to-day is that of the superiority to be derived from
the theoretical instruction given in our colleges. The
schoolmaster and the university professor, rather looked
down upon of old, have suddenly become the great
modern fetiches. It is they who are to remedy the
inequalities of nature, efface the distinctions of class, and
win our battles for us.

Instruction thus becoming the universal panacea, it
was indispensable to stuff the heads of the young citizens
with Greek, Latin, history, and scientific formulae. No
sacrifice, no expense, was too great. The fabrication of
schoolmasters, bachelors, and licentiates became the
most important of the Latin industries. It is almost the
only one, in fact, that remains prosperous.

When studying, in another chapter, the Latin con-
ception of education, we saw the results produced by the

25

370 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

French method of instruction. We saw that it per-
manently warps the judgment, stuffs the brain with
phrases and formulae which are quickly forgotten, in no
way prepares the pupil for the necessities of modern life,
and, in short, only creates an immense army of men who
are incapable, useless, and, consequently, rebels.

But how is it that our system of education, instead _ of
merely being useless, as of old, is to-day manufacturing
outcasts and rebels ?

The reason is very clear. Our theoretical education,
instilled from our text-books, prepares the pupil for abso-
lutely nothing but public functions, and makes the pupil
absolutely unfitted for any other career, so that he is
obliged, in order to live, to make a furious rush toward
the State-paid employments. But as the number of
candidates is immense, and the number of places very
small, the great majority fail, and find themselves without
any means of existence — outcasts, in fact, and naturally
insurgents.

The figures on which these remarks of mine are based
will show the extent of this evil.

The University of France creates about 1,200 graduates
every year, and has 200 professional chairs at her dis-
posal. It thus leaves a thousand on the pavement. They
naturally turn to other professions. But everywhere they
find the dense army of graduates of every faculty, seeking
for every kind of employment, even the most indifferent.
For 40 situations as copyist open every year at the
Prefecture of the Seine there are 2,000 or 3,000 candi-
dates. For 150 situations as schoolmasters in the schools
of Paris there are 15,000 candidates. Those who fail
gradually lower their pretensions, and are often glad
enough to take refuge in addressing envelopes, by which
means they can earn is. 8d. a day by working twelve
hours without ceasing. It is not very difficult to divine

FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM OF SOCIALISM 371

the sentiments that fill the hearts of these wretched
labourers.

As for the successful candidates, it must not be
supposed that their lot is very enviable. As Government
clerks at ^^60, magistrates at ^72, engineers of the Ecole
Centrale at ;^5o — as draughtsmen in a railviray office or
chemists in a factory, they are not nearly so well off as a
working man of average capacity, and are also- far less
independent.

But why this obstinate pursuit of official employment ?
Why do not the army of unemployed graduates fall back
on industry, agriculture, commerce, or the manual
trades ?

For two reasons. Firstly, because they are totally
incapable, on account of their theoretical education, of
performing any but the easy duties of bureaucrats,
magistrates, or professors. But even then they might
recommence their education by apprenticing themselves.
They do not do so — and this is the second reason — on
account of the insurmountable prejudice against manual
labour, industry, and agriculture, which is to be met with
in all the Latin nations and nowhere else.

The Latin nations, in fact, in spite of deceptive appear-
ances, possess a temperament so littls democratic that
manual labour, which is very highly esteemed by the
English aristocracy, is by them regarded as humiliating
or even dishonourable. The humblest Government
clerk, the smallest professor, the humblest of copyists,
regards himself as a personage by the side of a mechanic,
a foreman, a fitter, a farmer, who none the less will often
bring infinitely more intelligence, reason, and initiative
to bear in his caUing than does the clerk or the pro-
fessor in his. I have never been able to discover, and
I am certain that no one will ever discover, in what a
Latin master, a clerk, a professor of grammar or of

372 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

history could be considered the intellectual superior of
a good cabinet-maker, a capable fitter, or an intelligent
foreman. If after comparing them from an intellectual
point of view we do the same from a utilitarian point of
view we shall quickly admit that the clerk and the pro-
fessor are greatly inferior to the good working man, and
it is for this reason that the latter is as a general thing far
better paid.

The only visible superiority that one can recognise in
the former is the^ fact that they usually wear a " redin-
gote " — as a rule threadbare enough, but still preserving
the appearance of a " redingote " — while the foreman and
the artisan work in a blouse, an article of wear which is a
little in disfavour with the fashionable public. If we could
analyse the psychologic influence exercised in France by
these two garments we should find that it is absolutely
enormous — certainly far greater than the influence of all
the constitutions fabricated in the last hundred years by
the host of unemployed lawyers. If, by means of any
magic ring, we could be brought to believe that the
blouse was as seemly and becoming as the " redingote,"
all our conditions of existence would be transformed in a
single day. We should see a revolution in manners and
thoughts of which the effects would be far greater than
all those of the past. But we have not advanced so far
yet, and the Latin races will suffer the weight of their
prejudices and errors for a long time yet.
, The consequences of the Latin disdain of manual
work will be still graver in the future. It is on account
of this sentiment that we see the immense army of the
unadapted created by our system of education increasing
more and more. Observing the lack of consideration
from which manual labour suffers, feeling that they are
despised by the middle class and the university, the
peasant and the workman finally get it into their heads

FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM OF SOCIALISM 373

that they belong to an inferior caste, from which they
must at any price escape. Then their one dream is to
thrust their sons, by dint of privation, into the caste of
graduates. They succeed only in making outcasts of
their sons ; incapable of rising to the ranks of the
bourgeois through lack of money, and incapable on
account of their education of following the trade of their
father. These outcasts will all their lives bear the weight
of the lamentable errors of which their parents have
made them the victims. They will be certain recruits
for the Socialists.

Not only by reason of the instruction it affords, but
also on account of its highly undemocratic spirit, the
present university will have played the most disastrous
part in France. In affixing its contempt to all manual
work, and all that is not theory, words, or phrases, and
in making its pupils believe that their diplomas confer
on them a kind of intellectual nobility, which will place
them in a superior caste, and give them access to
wealth, or at least to comfort, the university has played
a lamentable part. After long and costly studies the
graduate is forced to recognise that he has acquired no
elevation of mind, that he has by no means escaped from
his caste, and that his life is to begin again. In the face
of the time lost, of their faculties blunted for all useful
work, of the perspective of the humiliating poverty which
awaits them, how should they not become insurgents ? '

Of course our university authorities see nothing of all
this. Their work inspires them — like all the apostles —
with the keenest enthusiasm, and they lose no occasion
to intone a chant of triumph.

' One may form some idea of the increasing progress of Socialism
among the French university youth by reading the manifesto, full of
hatred and fury against society, recently published by the " CoUec-
tivist Students."

374 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

"One must read," writes M. H. Berenger, "the' books
of MM. Liard and Lavisse, the two architects-in-chief of
our secondary education, in order to cothprehend the
kind of enthusiasm that has seized them before the result
of their works. Do they hear the low but formidable
murmur of all those that have been deceived by the
university, who have been raised only to fall into greater
misery, who are everywhere beginning to be known as
the intellectual proletariat ? "

Alas ! no, they do not hear it ; and if they did they
would hardly understand. They have performed a bad
work — a work far worse than that of Marat and Robe-
spierre, who at least were not guilty of corrupting the
mind ; but can we say that the work is truly theirs ?
When the minds of men are possessed by certain powerful
illusions, how can we blame the obscure agents, the
blind puppets, who have merely obeyed the general ten-
dencies of their times !

The hour has yet to sound when our terrible illusions
on the worth of the Latin system of education shall have
vanished. At present they are making themselves felt
more than ever. Every day a laborious youth, more and
more numerous, goes up to the university to demand of
it the realisation of its dreams and hopes. The number
of students, which was 10,900 in 1878, and 17,600 in
1888, is now 27,000. What an army of outcasts, of
rebels, of partisans for the Socialism of the future 1

And as though the number of these future outcasts
were not yet great enough, there are those who would
demand of the State the means to increase their number.
A few clear-sighted people see the danger, and point it
out. In vain ; their voices sound idly, unechoed in a
desert.

"The millions that these bursaries cost the Budget,"
said M. Bouge recently, before the Chamber of Deputies,

FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM OF SOCIALISM 375

"are a small matter beside the social problem of pre-
venting them from becoming a means of turning out
outcasts. Too many such are being formed already,
without the State assisting the process by the distribution
of bursaries." '

' As our superior classical instruction is a matter of luxury, which
can be of use only to those that possess a certain amount of leisure,
there is not a single serious reason for giving it gratuitously. This
is perfectly understood by the Americans. A young man who should
feel the need of it, and who should manifest an aptitude for it,
should first of all find some means of earning his living, and this
would be an excellent preparation for life. This is what the students
— poor students — do in a truly democratic country, such as America.
In an article on the University of Chicago, which he has visited, one
of the most illustrious French savants, M. Moissan, expresses him-
self as follows : —

" In most of the American universities you will find young men
without means, who, in order to pay the fees, which at Chicago
amount to about ;£7 a term, undertake some manual labour out of
college hours. One student will be a lamp-lighter ; another will
offer his services at an hotel in the evening. Another will earn his
living by becoming cook or major-domo to his comrades. Another
will have saved money out of a modest salary for several years
in order to come up to the university and take his degree."

We may be sure that young men possessed of sufficient energy to
make such efforts as these will never be outcasts, and will succeed
in any career. ,

CHAPTER VI

THE STRUGGLE WITH THE UNADAPTED

I. The future attack cf the unadapted : — Hatred of the unadapted for the
society in which they can find no place — The unadapted in the United
States — Their miserable condition and their number — ^The violent
struggles that will have to be maintained against them. 2. The utili-
sation of the unadapted: — The utilisation of the unadapted constitutes
one of the most difficult problems of the present time — Solutions
proposed and attempted — Inability of the State to nourish the army
of the unadapted — Public or private charity merely increases their
number — The right to work — Disastrous results of the experiments
hitherto attempted — Vanity of the promises of Socialism.

I. The Future Attack of the Unadapted.

WE have just seen how the special conditions of the
age have immensely multiplied the crowd of the
unadapted. This multitude of incapable, disinherited,
or degenerate persons is a grave danger to civilisation.
United in a common hatred of the society in which they
can find no place, they demand nothing but to fight
against it. They form an army ready for all revolutions,
having nothing to lose and everything to gain — at least,
in appearance. Above all, this army is ready for all
works of destruction. Nothing is more natural than
the sentiment of hatred which these outcasts entertain
for a civilisation that is too complicated for them, and to
which they are perfectly sensible that they can never

376

vSTRUGGLE WITH THE UNADAPTED 377

adapt themselves. They only wait for the occasion to
rise to the assault.

The dangers which threaten Europe threaten the
United States still more immediately. The War of Seces-
sion was the prelude to the bloody conflict which will
presently take place between the various classes living on
American soil. All the unadapted of the universe direct
themselves to the New World. Despite these invasions,
the danger of which no American statesman has hitherto
understood, the English race is still in the majority in
the United States ; but the other races — Irish, Slavs,
Germans, Italians, negroes, and so forth — are for ever
increasing. For example, there are now 7,600,000 negroes
in the United States. An annual immigration of 400,000
strangei-s is always increasing this dangerous population.
These foreigners form veritable colonies, perfectly in-
different, and more often than not hostile to their country
of adoption. Unconnected with her by ties of blood,
tradition, or language, they care nothing for her general
interests. They only seek to live on her.

But their existence is all the harder, their misery all the
more profound, in that they are in competition with the
most energetic race in the world. They are scarcely able
to exist save on condition of contenting themselves with
the lowest and most degraded tasks, and therefore the
worst paid.

These strangers form at present only about 15 per cent,
of the total population of the United States, but in cer-
tain districts they are very nearly in the majority. The
state of North Dakotah already counts 44 per cent, of
foreigners. Nine-tenths of the negroes are concentrated
in the fifteen Southern States, where they form a third of
the population. In South Carolina they are now in the
majority, the proportion of negroes being 60 per cent.
They equal the whites in number in Louisiana.

378 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

We know how the negroes are treated on American
soil, where their liberation from slavery is generally
regarded as a stupendous error. Theoretically they
enjoy all the rights known to the other citizens, but in
practice they are shot or hung without any formality at
the first offence. Treated everywhere as pariahs, as a
species of animal intermediate between the apes and
man, they will be perfectly ready to join the first army
that shall undertake to attack the great Republic.

"The whites of the North," writes M. de Mandat-
Grancy, " spent many millions of dollars and many lives
of men, thirty years ago, to break the chains of the
worthy negroes of the South. And now these worthy
negroes, whom they have enfranchised, and made electors,
have reached the number of 8,000,000, for they breed
like rabbits. They are already in the majority in several
States, and as soon as they form the majority in any State
life is no longer tolerable there. The negro's idea of
civilisation is that which existed recently in Dahomey, or
that which the blacks have established in San Domingo,
where nobody works and everybody lives on the ex-
chequer, which is filled by despoiling such whites as are
foolish enough to work. This is the ideal order of things,
which they hasten to realise as soon as they become the
masters ; and they have become the masters in several of
the Southern States. The latter are beginning to show
signs of anger. . . . Those who are acquainted with the
expeditious procedures to which the Americans have
recourse when they wish to remedy a state of things that
is contrary to their ideas of what should be, would be by
no means astonished if some fine day they were to find
some means of ridding themselves of the negroes as they
have rid themselves of the Chinese."

Very likely ; but 7,500,000 men are too great a host
to get rid of easily, and there are too many conflicting

STRUGGLE WITH THE UN ADAPTED 379

interests in question to permit of the re-establishment of
slavery. The Americans got rid of the Chinese by for-
bidding them to enter the country; of the Indians by
enclosing them in territories surrounded by vigilant
guards armed with repeating rifles, having orders to
slaughter them as soon as the pangs of hunger drove
them to leave these enclosures. By this summary means
they were able to destroy nearly all the Indians in a very
few years. But this method would seem difficult of
application to the millions of negroes, and quite impos-
sible of application to the immense stock of white
foreigners of all kinds scattered through the towns ;
especially as these whites are electors, able to send their
representatives to the Chambers, and to exercise public
powers. In the last strike at Chicago the Governor of
the State was on the side of the insurgents.

I do not doubt, having regard to the energetic
character of the Anglo-Saxons of America, that they
will succeed in surmounting the dangers with which they
are threatened ; but they will do so only at the cost of
a more destructive conflict than any history has ever
recorded.

But we need not here concern ourselves with the
destinies of America. Her intestine dissensions are of
little importance to Europe, who has scarcely been
treated with tenderness by her rulers. Europe has
nothing to lose by the struggle, and many useful lessons
to gain.

Our European outcasts are happily neither so numerous
nor so dangerous as those of America, but they are none
the less very formidable, and the time will come when
they will be marshalled under the banner of Socialism,
and when we shall have to deliver battle to them. But
these acute crises will of necessity be ephemeral. What-
ever may be their issue, the problem of the utilisation of

38o THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

the unadapted will present itself for a long period with
the same difficulties. The search after the solution of
the problem will weigh heavily on the destinies of the
peoples of the future, and it is as yet impossible to
foresee what means they will find to resolve it. We shall
see why.

2. The Utilisation of the Unadapted.

The only methods that have hitherto been proposed
for the benefit of the unadapted have been private charity
and State aid. But long experience has taught us that
these are insufficient methods at the outset, and after-
wards highly dangerous. Even supposing that the State
or the individuals composing the State were rich enough
to support the multitude of the unadapted, this support
would merely end in the rapid increase of their number.
The true unadapted would promptly be joined by the
semi-unadapted, and all those who, preferring idleness to
labour, work to-day only because they are driven to work
by hunger.

Although relatively limited, charity, whether public or
private, has hitherto done little but considerably increase
the crowd of the unadapted. As soon as a State-Aid
office is opened anywhere the number of poor increases
in enormous proportions. I know a little village near the
barriers of Paris where more than half the population is
entered in the books of the relief office.

Inquiries made on this subject have proved that 95 per
cent, of the recipients of relief in France are persons who
refuse any species of work. This is the figure given by
the inquiries made under the superintendence of M.
Monod, director of the Ministry of the Interior. Out of
727 able-bodied mendicants taken at hazard, who all
lamented that they had no work, only eighteen consented
to undertake an easy employment bringing them in 3s. 4d.

STRUGGLE WITH THE UNADAPTED 381

a day. Charity, private or public, merely supports them in
their idleness. M. de Wateville wrote, a few years ago,
in a report on the state of pauperism in France : —

" During the sixty years of the existence of the Assist-
ance publique a domicile, it has never seen an indigent
person emerge from his poverty and succeed in supplying
his own needs through the assistance of this method
of charity. On the contrary, it often causes hereditary
pauperism. Thus we see to-day entered in the books of
this department the grandsons of the indigents who were
given public aid in 1802, while their sons, in 1830, were
also in the fatal books."

Herbert Spencer has spoken with great energy on the
same subject : —

" Fostering the good-for-nothing at the expense of the
good is an extreme cruelty. It is a deliberate storing up
of miseries for future generations. There is no greater
curse to posterity than that of bequeathing them an
increasing population of imbeciles and idlers and
criminals. To aid the bad in multiplying is, in effect,
the same as maliciously providing for our descendants
a larger host of enemies. It may be doubted whether
the maudlin philanthropy which, looking only at direct
mitigations, ignores indirect mischiefs, does not inflict
more misery than the extremest selfishness inflicts.
Refusing to consider the remote influences of his in-
continent generosity, the thoughtless giver stands but a
degree above the drunkard who, absorbed in to-day's
pleasure, think not of to-morrow's pain, or the spend-
thrift who buys immediate delights at the cost of ultimate
poverty. In one respect, indeed, he is worse ; since,
while getting the present gratification caused by giving
gratification, he leaves the future evils to be borne by
others — escaping them himself. And calling for still
stronger reprobation is that scattering of money prompted

382 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

by misinterpretation of the saying that ' charity covers a
multitude of sins.' For in the many whom this misin-
terpretation leads to believe that by large donations they
can compound for evil deeds, we may trace an element of
positive baseness — an effort to get a good place in another
world, no matter at what injury to fellow-creatures."

But in addition to charity properly so called, which is
destined merely to aid the necessitous who cannot or will
not work, there is another problem. Ought not the State
to charge itself, according to the pretensions of the
Socialists, with the distribution of labour to those who
lack it and demand it ? This theory evidently arises
from the Latin conception of the State, and we have not
to consider it here. Without concerning ourselves with
principles, it is enough to inquire merely whether the
State is in a position to play the part that is expected
of it. As the experiment has often been made — ^for the
right to labour has not been proclaimed for the first time
to-day — it is easy to answer the question.

The National Assembly and the Convention, after
having in 1791 and 1793 decreased the establishment of
a department which should "give work to poor able-
bodied men who had been unable to procure it," and
having proclaimed that " society owes the means of life
to unfortunate citizens," established national workshops.
In 1791 these occupied in Paris 31,000 men, who were
paid IS. 8d. a day. These men arrived at the yards at ten
o'clock, left at three, and did nothing but drink and play
in the interval. As for the inspectors who were charged
with overseeing them, when they were questioned they
replied simply that they were not in sufficient force to
make themselves obeyed, and did not want to risk having
their throats cut.

" It was the same thing over again," writes M. Cheysson,
"with our national works in 1848, which led to the

STRUGGLE WITH THE UNADAPTED 383

bloody work of June (when their suppression was
attempted).

" It is interesting to discover that, despite the lessons of
history, the prejudice of the right to labour has retained
its faithful. They have just held, at Erfurt, the sixth
Social Evangelical Congress, a sort of Parliament of the
Reformed Churches, thoroughly steeped in Socialism,
Christian Socialism. According to the report of a
distinguished publicist, M. de Masson, the active col-
laborator with Pastor Badelswing in creating labour
colonies, the Congress proclaimed ' that it was the strict
duty of a well-regulated State to provide, as far as possible,
for the lamentable social scourge of unmerited idleness.'
This is the modified formula of the right to labour."

As we see, the problem has long been occupying
distinguished minds, and none of them has been able to
find even a distant solution. It is evident that if their
solution had been discovered the social problem would
in great measure have been solved.

And it is because it remains so far unsolved that
Socialism, which pretends to resolve the insoluble
problem, and which shrinks from no promises, is to-
day so formidable. It has in its following all the
vanquished and disinherited of the world, and all those
unadapted whose formation we have seen. For them it
represents the last spark of hope that never dies in the
heart of man. But as its promises are necessarily vain,
and since the laws of nature that rule our fate cannot be
changed, its impotence will be glaring to every eye in the
very hour of its triumph, and it will then have as its
enemies the very multitudes it had seduced, and who
now place all their hope in it. Disabused anew, man
will once more take up his eternal task of fashioning
such chimera as will for a while charm his mind.

BOOK VI

THE DESTINIES OF SOCIALISM

CHAPTER I

THE LIMITS OF HISTORIC PREVISION

I. The idea of necessity in the modern conception of social phenomena: —
The change effected by science in our modern conception of the
world — ^The idea, of evolution and necessity — Why sociology does not
in its present state constitute a science — Its inability to foresee events
— Historical foresight vrould be possible to an intelligence immensely
superior to that of man— The utility of the idea of the necessity of
phenomena. 2. The prevision of social phenomena : — Impossibility of
foreseeing social phenomena with any certainty, although they are
subject to laws — For previsions are only hypotheses based on
analogies, and must limit themselves to the very near future — Our
general ignorance of the first causes of all phenomena.

I. The Idea of Necessity in the Modern Con-
ception OF Social Phenomena.

I SHALL very soon have occasion to sum up my
predictions on the future of Socialism. In the
meantime it will be not without use to inquire within
what limits science allows such predictions, and in what
degree it is possible to formulate them.

When the progress of science revealed to man the
order of the universe, and the ordered sequence of
phenomena, his general conceptions of things were
transformed. It is not yet so very long ago that a

384

THE LIMIT OF HISTORIC PREVISION 385

benevolent Providence used to guide the course of
events, leading man by the hand, presiding over battles
and the destinies of empires. How could its decrees be
foreseen ? They were unfathomable. How could they
be debated ? They were omnipotent. The nations
could but prostrate themselves before it, and seek, by
means of humble prayers, to conjure its furies or its
caprices.

The new conceptions of the world which have arisen
from the discoveries of science have enfranchised man
from the power of the gods whom his imagination
created of old. The new conceptions have not made him
freer, but they have taught him that it is useless to seek
to influence by prayer the heavy and imperturbable
machinery of the necessities which direct the universe.

After having shown us the hierarchy of these necessi-
ties, science has shown us also the general procedure
of the transformation of our planet, and the mechanism
of evolution which has changed, in the course of time,
the humble creatures of the first geological periods to
the present forms.

The laws of this evolution having been determined as
regards individuals, it was attempted to apply them to
human societies. Modern research has proved that
societies also have passed through a series of inferior
forms before reaching their present level.

Of these researches is born sociology, an order of
knowledge which will one day, perhaps, compose itself,
but which hitherto has had to limit itself to recording
phenomena without being able to predict them.

It is on account of this inability to foresee that soci-
ology cannot be regarded as a science, or even as the
beginning of a science. An order of knowledge deserves
the name of science only when it allows us to determine
he conditions of a phenomena, and, consequently, to

26^

386 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

reproduce it, or at least to foretell its occurrence. Such
sciences are chemistry, physics, astronomy, and even,
within certain limits, biology. Sociology is nothing of
the kind. All that it can tell us — and it is not sociology,
as a matter of fact, that has told us this — is that the
moral world, as well as the physical world, is ruled by
inflexible laws. What we call chance is merely the
infinite concatenation of causes that we are unac-
quainted with.

But all precise prediction is rendered impossible by
the complicated entanglement of these causes. We are
able, not to foresee social phenomena, but merely to
understand them a little, by studying separately each
of the factors which give rise to them, and then seek-
ing to discover the reciprocal action of these factors.
Theoretically the method is the same as that of the
chemist who analyses a compound body, or of the
astronomer who seeks to determine the orbit of a planet.
But when the elements acting on one another are too
numerous, modern science confesses her inability to
discover the definitive effect of so many causes. To
determine the relative positions of three bodies, of which
the masses and times are different, and which exercise an
inter-ethereal attraction on one another, is a problem
that for a long tinje defied the sagacity of the most
illustrious mathematicians, and it needed the genius of
a Poincar6 to resolve it.

And in the matter of social phenomena we have to
consider that it is a question not of three bodies, but of
millions of elements, of which we have to discover the
reciprocal action. How are we to foresee the final
result of such a tangle ? To obtain not certitudes, nor
even approximations, but simply general and summary
indications, it is necessary to act as the astronomer, who,
seeking to deduct the position of an unknown planet by

THE LIMIT OF HISTORIC PREVISION 387

the perturbations which it produces in the orbit of a
fixed planet, does not attempt to embrace in his formulae
the action of all the bodies in the universe. He neglects
the secondary perturbations, which would render the
problem insoluble, and contents himself with approxi-
mations.i

Even in the most exact sciences the best results that
our imperfect intelligence can attain are only approxi-
mate. But an intelligence like that of which Laplace
speaks, "which for a given instant should know all the
forces by which Nature is animated, and the respective
positions of the particles of which she is composed,
granting that it were vast enough to submit all these data
to analysis, would then embrace in the same formula the
movements of the largest bodies in the universe and
those of the lightest atom. Nothing would be uncertain
to it, and the future, as the past, would be present to its
eyes."

We do not know if among the millions of worlds
which pursue their silent ways through the firmament
there has ever arisen this intelligence of which Laplace
speaks, an intelligence which would have been able to
read in the nebula that became the solar system the birth

' It is only to the smallness of the masses of the planets relatively
to that of the sun, to the slightness of the eccentricities and the
inclinations of their orbits, to the distance of the nearest stars from
the solar system, and finally to the imperfection of the measures of
time and space that are accessible to us, that the calculations of the
astronomers owe their apparent precision. To the impossibility of
more completely establishing these calculations we must add the
insufficiency of our methods of observation. What these are we
may judge by the fact that for thousands of years generation after
generation of astronomers observed Sirius, the most brilliant star in
our sky, without ever suspecting that it was moving at the rate of
many hundreds of thousands of leagues a day. It was only by
indirect method that it was discovered that certain stars are moving
through space with a speed fifteen times greater than that of a
cannon-ball.

388 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

of man, the phases of his history, and the last hours of the
last living beings on our frozen earth. Do not let us
envy such an intelligence too greatly. If the book of
destiny were laid open before our eyes the most powerful
motives of human activity would be destroyed. Those
whom the Sybil of antiquity instructed in the future
paled with terror, and rushed towards the sacred spring
whose waters produced oblivion.

The most eminent of thinkers — Kant, Stuart Mill, and
quite recently such psychologists as Gumplowicz — affirm
that if the psychology of individuals and nations were
well known we should be able to foresee their conduct ;
but this amounts to enunciating in other terms the
hypothesis of Laplace, which supposes known elements
too numerous to know, and acting on one another in too
complex a fashion for us to submit it to analysis.

We mtist therefore limit ourselves to the knowledge
that the moral world is subject to fixed laws, and must
resign ourselves to ignorance of the future consequences
of these laws.

The notion of necessity which all the discoveries of
modern science increasingly confirm is not a mere vain
and useless theory. It teaches us at least tolerance, and
permits of our entering upon the study of social pheno-
mena with the coldness of a chemist who analyses a
compound or determines the density of a gas. It teaches
us to be no more irritated at events which offend our
ideas than the scientist at the unforeseen result of an
experiment/ It is impossible that the indignation of a
philosopher should be aroused by phenomena which are
subject to inevitable laws ; he must limit himself to
studying them, in the persuasion that nothing could have
prevented their occurrence.

THE LIMIT OF HIST^JrIC PREVISION 389

2. The Prevision of Social Phenomena.

Sociology, then, must limit itself to recording pheno-
mena. Whenever even its most illustrious professors
have attempted, as did Auguste Comte, to enter into the
region of previsions, they have lamentably erred.

Statesmen even, though they are immersed in the
sphere of political events, and are, one would imagine,
the best qualified to observe their sequence, are least able
of any to foresee them.

"How many times," writes M. Fouill^e, "have the
prophets been given the lie by events ! Napoleon an-
nounced that Europe would soon become Cossack. He
predicted that Wellington would establish himself in
England as a despot ' because he was too great to remain
a mere subject.' ' If you accord independence to the
United States,' said Lord Shelburne, no less blind from
his point of view, 'the sun of. England will set, and
her glory will be for ever eclipsed.' Burke and Fox were
rival false prophets at the time of the Revolution. The
former announced that France would shortly be divided
like Poland. Thinkers of all sorts, apparently strangers
to the affairs of this world, have almost always proved
to be more clear-sighted than mere statesmen. A
Rousseau and a Goldsmith foretold the French Revo-
lution ; Arthur Young foresaw for France, after transi-
tory violence, ' a lasting well-being, resulting from her
reforms.' Tocqueville, thirty years before the event,
announced that the Southern States of America would
attempt secession. Heine told us, years in advance,
'You, you French, have more to fear from a free and
united Germany than from the whole Holy Alliance,
or all the Cossacks united.' Quinet predicted in 1832
the changes that were to take place in Germany, the rSle
of Prussia, the threat which would be held over our

390 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

heads, and the iron hand that would attempt to regain ,
the keys of Alsace. The fact is that as rriost statesmen
are absorbed in the things of the present hour, myopia
is their natural state."

We must accordingly be extremely reserved in our
predictions, attempting none but indications of a very
general character, drawn more especially from the
profound study of the characters and histories of races,
and for the rest we must confine ourselves to observations.

The optimistic or pessimistic form in which we express
these observations merely represents the nuances of
language which may facilitate our explanations, but in
themselves, are of no importance. They depend on our
temperaments and frames of mind. The thinker, accus-
tomed to observe the inflexible inevitableness of things,
will generally have a pessimistic appreciation of them ;
the philosopher, who sees in the world only a curious
spectacle, will have a resigned or indifferent appreciation
of them. The systematically optimistic conception of
them is hardly ever found except in complete imbeciles,
who are favoured by fortune and satisfied with their
destiriy. But if the thinker, the philosopher, and (by
chance) the imbecile knew how to observe, their state-
ments of phenonema would be necessarily identical, as
identical as the photographs of the same monument
taken by different operators.

To make, as the historians do, a statement of past
^events, and to distribute responsibilities, blame, and
praise, is a puerile task that the scholars of the future
will justly despise. The train of causes which create
events is far stronger than the individuals that have ac-
complished them. The most memorable events of history
— the fall of Babylon or of Athens, the decadence of the
Roman Empire, the Revolution, and the recent disasters of
the French — are to be attributed not to men, but to genera-

THE. LIMIT OF HISTORIC PREVISION 391

tions of men. The marionette who, unconscious of the
threads which make him move, should blame or praise
the movements of other marionettes, would assuredly
be altogether in the wrong. We are influenced by our
environment, by circumstances, and by the thoughts
of the dead ; that is to say, by those mysterious here-
ditary forces which survive in us. They determine the
greater number of our actions, and are all the more
powerful in that we do not see them. Our thoughts,
when by rare chance we have any personal thoughts,
will have scarcely any influence save on generations that
are yet unborn. We can have very little influence on
the present, because the present is the outcome of a past
which we can do nothing to change. Children of this
long past, our actions will have all their consequences
only in a future that we shall not see. The present hour
is the only one that has any value for us, and yet, in
the existence of a race, this short hour is of all but no
account. It is even impossible for us to appreciate the
true significance of the events which take place under
our eyes, because their influence on our own destiny
leads us immensely to exaggerate their importance. They
might be compared to the ripples which arise and die
incessantly on the surface of a river, without disturbing
its flow. The insect derelict on the leaf that these
ripples rock takes them for mountains, and justly fears
their impact. But effect on the flow of the river they
have none.

The profound study of social phenomena accordingly
leads us to this conclusion : on the one hand, that these
phenomena are determined by the interaction of neces-
sities, and are consequently capable of being foreseen
by a superior intelligence ; and on the other hand, that
such predictions are almost always impossible to limited
beings like ourselves.

392 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

Nevertheless, man will always seek to raise the curtain
which hides the impenetrable future, and the philosophers
themselves are unable to escape from this futile curiosity.
But at least they know that their predictions are only
hypothetical, based more especially upon analogies
borrowed from the past, or deduced from the general
trend of affairs and the fundamental characteristics of
the nations. They know also that even those predictions
which are apparently the most assured must limit them-
selves to the very immediate future, and that even then
many unknown causes may give them the lie. A fairly
penetrating mind might doubtless have foretold the
Revolution a few years before it broke out by studying
the general state of mind, but how could it have foretold
Bonaparte, the conquest of Europe, and the Empire ?

A scientist, then, cannot give as certain a social pre-
diction relating to a distant date. He sees some nations
rising and others falling, and as he knows by the past
that the slope of decline does not remount, he is justified
in saying that those nations which are on the slope
of decadence will continue to descend. He knows that
institutions cannot be changed at the will of legislators,
and seeing that the Socialists desire entirely to over-
throw the institutions on which our civilisations repose,
he can readily predict the catastrophes which will follow
such events. These are predictions of a very general
kind, which have perhaps a little in common with those
simple and eternal truths which we call platitudes. The
most advanced science is obliged to content itself with
such sorry approximations.

And what can we say of the future, we who know next
to nothing of the world in which we live, we who hurl
ourselves against an impenetrable wall so soon as we
seek to discover the cause of phenomena, and the
realities which hide themselves under appearances ?

THE LIMIT OF HISTORIC PREVISION 393

Are things create or uncreate, real or unreal, ephemeral
or eternal ? Has the world a reason for being or has it
not ? Are the birth and evolution of the universe con-
ditioned by the will of superior beings, or by bhnd
necessities, by the imperious destiny to which both gods
and men, according to the ancient conception, must both
obey ? And the atom, which seems to form the intimate
basis of all things in the world, from the mineral to our-
selves — is it anything more than a theoretical conception
of our minds ? We find it at the base of all the theories
of science. Without it they would crumble to fragments,
and nevertheless no human eye has ever seen this
mysterious substratum, without beginning and without
end, indestructible and eternal.

And our uncertainty is no less' in the moral world.
Whence do we come ? Whither are we going ? Are our
dreams of happiness, justice, and truth anything more than
illusions created by a congested state of the brain, and
in flagrant disagreement with the murderous laws of the
struggle for life ? Let us at least remain in doubt, for
doubt is almost hope. We are voyaging blindly on an
unknown sea of unknown things, which only become
the more mysterious as we seek to discover their essence.
Rarely, in this impenetrable chaos, we catch sight of
sometimes a few fugitive lights, a few relative truths, which
we call laws if they be not too ephemeral. Let us resign
ourselves to knowing no more than these uncertainties ;
they are fickle guides, no doubt, but they are none the
less all that are accessible to us. Science can invoke
no others. The gods of barbarism gave us no better.
Truly they gave man hopes, but it was not the gods who
taught him to utilise to his own profit the forces that
surrounded him, and thus to render his existence less
painful.

Happily for humanity, it has no need to seek its motives

394 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

of action in the cold and inaccessible regions of pure
science. It has always demanded illusions to charm
it, and dreamers to lead it. They have never been
lacking : political chimeras, religious chimeras, military
chimeras, social chimeras, they have always exercised
a sovereign empire over us. These deceiving phantoms
have been and will always be our masters. Since the
time, thousands of years ago, when man first emerged
from primitive savagery, he has never ceased from
creating himself illusions to adore, nor from founding
his civilisations upon them. Each has charmed him
for a certain period, long or short, but the hour has
always sounded when they have ceased to charm him,
and then he deposes them with as great efforts as those
with which he enthroned them. Once again humanity
returns to its eternal task ; without doubt the only one
that can make it forget its hardness of its destiny. The
theorists of Socialism are only recommencing the heavy
task of erecting a new god, destined to replace those
of the past, until the time when inevitable evolution
condemns it to perish in its turn.

CHAPTER II

THE FUTURE OF SOCIALISM

I. Summary : — Summary of the conditions favourable or unfavourable to
the development of Socialism — Present power of Socialism. 2. The
elements of success of Socialism : — Fundamental principles of Socialism
— Socialism constitutes a mental state rather than a doctrine — Its
danger resides not in the adherence of the crowd, but in that of
enlightened minds — Social upheavals begin always from above and
not from below — The example of the Revolution — The prevailing state
of mind at the time of the Revolution — Its analogy to the present time
— ^The directing classes are to-day losing all faith in the justice of their
cause — ^The promises of Socialism. 3. What will come of the success
of Socialism in the nations in which it triumphs : — Opinion of eminent
modern thinkers — They all arrive at the same conclusions — The im-
mediate destiny of the nations in which Socialism should establish
itself — Disorganisation and anarchy will promptly give rise to
Csesarism — Hypothesis of the peaceful aiid progressive establish-
ment of Socialism. 4. How the Socialists might seize on the govern-
ment of a country : — The modern armies and their mental state — The
end of a society becomes inevitable when once its army turns against
it — How the Hispano-American republics have fallen into anarchy
through the disintegration of their armies. 5. How Socialism may be
fought against : — The necessity of knowing the secrets of its strength
and weakness, as well as the mental states of its disciples — The
means of influencing crowds — Why a society must perish when its
natural defenders shrink from conflict and exertion — Nations perish
through effeminacy of character, not by the decrease of intelligence —
How Athens, Rome, and Byzantium perished.

I. Summary.

I HAVE attempted in this book to indicate not the
unknown forms towards which the societies of the
present day are evolving, but simply the tendencies
resulting from the transformed environment produced

395

396 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

by the new conditions of modern industry, the progress
of the sciences, the connection of nation with nation by
means of steam and electricity, and as many more such
factors. Man, hke all living creatures, cannot live with-
out adapting himself to his surroundings. This he can
do only by slow evolution, not by revolution. The
determining causes of modern evolution have too
recently arisen to permit of our guessing to what they
will lead ; so that we can only indicate in the case of
each of these causes the general direction of its probable
influence.

I have shown on what points the aspirations of the
Socialists are in agreement with the course of evolution
as we now see it. But such agreement is very rarely to
be observed. We have seen, on the contrary, that most
of the Socialist aspirations are in direct contradiction
with the necessities which rule the modern world, and
that their realisation would lead us back to lower phases
which society has passed through long ago. For this
reason the present position of the nations on the scale of
civilisation may be measured with sufficient accuracy by
their degree of resistance to Socialistic tendencies.

The association of similar interests — the only practical
form of solidarity— and economic competition, are neces-
sities of the modern period. Socialism hardly tolerates
the former, and wishes to suppress the latter. The only
power it respects is that of popular assemblies. The
individual is nothing to Socialism ; but as soon as the
individual becomes a crowd it recognises all its rights,
and notably that of absolute sovereignty. Psychology,
on the contrary, teaches us that as soon as the individual
makes part of a crowd he loses the greater part of the
mental qualities which constitute his strength.

To suppress competition and association, as the
Socialists would propose, would be to paralyse the

THE FUTURE OF SOCIALISM 397

chiefest levers of the present age. We need not inquire
as to whether competition is beneficial or not ; we
have only to inquire whether it is inevitable, and if we
find it to be so we can only try to adapt ourselves to it.

We have seen that economic competition, which
would end in crushing the individual worker, has found
its natural antidote, formed spontaneously, without any
theorising, in the association of similar interests. Asso-
ciations of workers on the one and of employers on the
other hand are able to fight on an equal footing, which
the isolated individual could not do. This is doubtless
only the substitution of collective for individual autocracy,
and we have no reason for calling the first less severe
than the second. Indeed, the contrary is sufficiently
evident. It is evident also that collective tyrannies
have ever been the most patiently supported. The
most rapacious tyrant could never have permitted
himself such acts of sanguinary despotism as were
perpetrated with impunity during the Revolution by
obscure anonymous committees acting in the name of
the collective interests, real or imaginary.

We have also seen that although Socialism is in con-
tradiction to all the data of modern science it possesses
an enormous force by the very fact that it is tending to
assume a religious form. Having assumed this form it
will be no longer a debatable theory, but a dpgma to be
obeyed — a dogma whose power over the mind will finish
by becoming absolute.

It is precisely for this reason that Socialism constitutes
the most formidable of the dangers that have hitherto
threatened modern societies. As its complete triumph
over at least one society is by no means impossible, it will
be as well to indicate its consequences for any nation
that may think to assure its happiness by submitting to
the prescriptions of the new religion.

398 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

2. The Elements of Success of Socialism.

Let us first of all recall the principal Socialistic dogmas,
and the factors that may end in their adoption.

If we set aside the fantastic portions of the innumerable
Socialistic programmes, and consider only those parts
which are essential, and which are rendered possible of
realisation in certain countries by the natural evolution
of things, we shall find that these programmes may be
reduced to four principal points : —

1. The suppression of the too great inequality of wealth
by progressive taxation, and especially by sufficiently high
death duties.

2. The progressive extension of the rights of the State ;
or of the collectivity which will replace the State, and will
differ from it only in name.

3. The resumption of the soil, capital, industries, and
enterprise of all sorts by the State ; that is to say, the
expropriation of the present proprietors for the profit of
the community.

4. Suppression of free competition and equalisation of
salaries.

The realisation of the first point is evidently possible,
and we may admit in theory that there would be an
advantage, or at least a kind of equity, in returning to
each generation of the community the surplus of the
fortunes accumulated by the preceding generations, and
thus to avoid the formation of a financial aristocracy,
which is often more oppressive than the old feudal
system.

As for the other points, and especially the progressive
extension of the rights of the State, whence would result
the suppression of open competition, and finally the
equalisation of salaries, these could only be realised at the
price of national ruin, for such measures are incompatible

THE FUTURE OF SOCIALISM 399

with the natural order of things, and would bring the
nation which should submit to them into such a manifest
state of inferiority, compared to its rivals, as would
promptly result in their yielding its place to them. I
do not say that this ideal will never be realised, for 1 have
shown that certain nations are tending to a greater and
gre-ater extension of the part of the State ; but we have
seen that these nations have by that very fact entered on
the downward path of decadence.

The Socialist ideal may therefore still be realised with
regard to these matters, and it may be realised according
to the formula indicated by Mr. Benjamin Kidd : —

" In the era upon which we are entering, the long
uphill effort to secure equality of opportunity, as well as
equality of political rights, will of necessity involve, not
the restriction of the interference of the State, but the
progressive extension of its sphere of action to almost
every department of our social life. The movement in
the direction of the regulation, control, and restriction of
the rights of wealth and capital must be expected to
continue, even to the extent of the State itself assuming
these rights in cases where it is proved that their reten-
tion in private hands must unduly interfere with the
rights and opportunities of the body of the people."

The Socialistic ideal is perfectly formulated in the
preceding lines ; an ideal of base equality and humi-
liating servitude, which would necessarily conduct the
nations which should submit to it to the last degree of
decadence. When we see such a programme proposed
by educated people we perceive at the same moment the
headway and the mischief which the Socialistic ideas
have accomplished.

Herein lies their chief danger. Modern Socialism is
far more of a mental state than a doctrine. What makes
it so threatening is not the as yet very insignificant

400 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

changes which it has produced in the popular mind, but
the already very great changes which it has caused in
the mind of the directing classes. The modern bour-
geoisie are no longer sure of their rights. Or rather they
are not sure of anything, and they do not know how to
defend anything. They listen to everything, and they
tremble before the most pitiable windbags. They are
incapable of the firm will and the severe discipline, of
the community of hereditary sentiments, which are the
cement of society, and without which no human asso-
ciation has hitherto been able to exist.
J They who believe in the revolutionary instincts of
crowds are the victims of the most deceptive appearances.
The upheavals of the crowd are only the fury of a
moment. Returning to their conservative tendencies,
they quickly return to the past, and they themselves
clamour for the restoration of the very idols which they
broke in a moment of violence. This our history repeats
on every page for the last century. Scarcely had the
Revolution completed its work of destruction, when
almost all that it had overthrown — political institutions
or religious institutions — was re-established under new
names. The river had turned aside for a moment, and
had resumed its course.

Social upheavals are commenced always from above,
never from below. Was it the people who started our
great Revolution ? Not they, indeed ! They had never
dreamed of such a thing. It was let loose by the nobility
and the controlling classes. This is a fact which, it
appears, is still a little novel to many minds ; but it will
become a platitude when a less summary psychology
than that which contents us to-day shall have made it
more clearly understood that material events are always
the consequence of certain unconscious states of the
mind.

THE FUTURE OF SOCIALISM 401

We know very well what was the general state of mind
at the moment of the Revolution ; it was the same that
we see growing up to-day : an emotional humani-
tarianism, which began by pastoral poems and the
discourses of philosophers, and ended with the guillotine.
This apparently so inoffensive sentiment it was that
promptly led to the weakening and disorganisation of
the directing classes. They no longer had faith in their
own cause ; they were even, as Michelet has said, the
enemies of their own cause. When on the night of the
4th of August, 1789, the nobility abjured its privileges
and its se'cular rights, the Revolution was accomplished.
The populace had merely to follow the hints which were
given them, and as usual they carried matters to ex-
tremes. They were not long about chopping off the
heads of the honest philosophers who thus abandoned
their rights. History does not greatly mourn for them;
but they at least deserve the indulgence of the psycho-
logists, who are accustomed to determine the remote
causes of our actions. These rights which the nobility
renounced so easily — could they, as a matter of fact,
have defended them any longer ? They were under the
influence of the theories, accumulated theories, and
discourses of a century ; how could they have acted
otherwise ? The ideas which had gradually taken
possession of their minds had finally gained such empire
over them that they could no longer discuss them. The
forces which our unconscious desires create are always
irresistible. Reason does not know them, and if she did
know them she could do nothing against them.

But it is nevertheless these obscure but sovereign
forces that are the very soul of history. Man has only
to bestir himself, and they lead him. They knead him
at their will, and will often make him act in contradiction
to his most obvious interests. These are the mysterious

27

402 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

threads which agitated the briUiant marionettes of
history, of which century after century |;ells us the
weaknesses and the exploits. We know no more of the
secret causes which made them act as they did than did
they themselves.

'~~~~Here, I repeat, is the danger of the present hour. We
are possessed of the same sentiments of sickly humani-
tarianism which have already given us the Revolution,
the most despotic and bloodiest that the world has ever
known — Napoleon, the Terror, Napoleon, and the death
of three millions of men. What a service would be

tendered to humanity by the benevolent divinity which
should suppress, to the very last example, the lamentable
race of philosophers, and at the same time the no less

4^mentable race of orators !

j The experience of a century ago was not enough ; and
it is the renascence of 'this very vague humanitarianism —
a humanitarianism of words, not of sentiments — the
disastrous heritage of our old Christian ideas, which has
become the most serious element of success of modern
Socialism. Under the unconscious but disintegrating
influence of this sentiment the directing classes have
lost all confidence in the justice of their cause. They-
surrender more and more to the leaders of the opposing
party, who merely despise them in proportion to their
concessions ; and the latter will be satisfied only when
they have taken everything from their adversaries, their
lives as well affflietr fortunes. The historian who shall
know the ruin that our weakness will cause, and the
downfall of the civilisations we have so ill defended, will
not mourn us, and will decide that we shall have merited
our fate.

We can by no means hope that the absurdity of the
greater part of the Socialistic theories will hinder their
triumph. As a matter of fact, these theories do not

THE FUTURE OF SOCIALISM 403

contain illusions more ridiculous than the religious
beliefs which for so long ruled the minds of the nations.
The defect of logic in a doctrine has never hindered its
propagation. Now Socialism is far more a religious
belief than a theory of reasoning. People submit to it ;
they do not discuss it. But it is in every way immensely
inferior to the other religions. The latter promised, after
death, a happiness of which it was impossible to prove
the chimerical side. The Socialist religion, instead of
a celestial happiness, of which no one can prove the
falsity, promises us a terrestrial happiness, of which we
shall all be able easily to prove the non-fulfilment.
Experience will promptly teach the disciples of the
Socialist illusions the vanity of their dream, and then
they will shatter with fury the idol they had adored
without knowing.

3. What will be the Consequences of Socialism
FOR THE Nations in which it Triumphs,

Before the hour of its triumph, which will be quickly
followed by that of its fall. Socialism is destined to widen
its influence, and no argument drawn from reason will be
able to prevail against it.

Yet both the disciples of the new cult and their feeble
adversaries will have received no lack of warnings. All
the thinkers who have studied the subject of modern
Socialism have indicated its dangers and have arrived at
identical conclusions with regard to the future it holds
in store for us. It would take too long to state all their
opinions ; but it will not be uninteresting to quote a few.

We need go back no further than Proudhon. In his
time Socialism was not nearly so threatening as it is
to-day. He wrote a famous page on the future of
Socialism which will doubtless be verified before very
long.

404 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

" The social revolution could only end in an immense
cataclysm, of which the immediate effect would be to lay
waste the earth, and to confine society in a strait-
waistcoat ; and if it were possible that such a state of
things should continue only a few weeks, to kill three or
four millions of men by an unforeseen famine. When
the Government is without resources ; when the country
is without commerce and without produce ; when Paris,
starving, blockaded by the provinces, receives from them
neither money nor provisions ; when the workers, de-
moralised by the politics of their clubs and the idleness
of their shops, seek their subsistence as best they may ;
when the State requires the jewels and plate of the
citizens to send to the Mint ; when house-to-house
requisitions are the only means of collecting taxes ; when
the first granary is pillaged, the first house entered, the
first church profaned, the first torch kindled, the first
blood spilt, the first head fallen — when the abomination
of desolation has come upon all France — oh, then you
will know what a social revolution is ; an unbridled
multitude, in arms, drunk with vengeance and with fury,
armed with pikes, with -hatchets, with naked swords ;
with cleavers and with hammers ; the city mournful and
silent ; the police at the threshold ; opinions suspected,
words listened to, tears observed, sighs numbered, silence
spied upon ; espionage and denunciations ; inexorable
requisitions, forced and increasing loans, depreciated
paper-money ; war with neighbours on the frontiers,
impitiable pro-consuls, the committee of public safety,
a supreme body with a heart of brass ; behold the fruits
of the democratic and social revolution ! With all my
heart and soul I repudiate Socialism ! It is impotent,
immoral, fit only to make dupes and pilferers ! This I
declare in the face of the subterranean propaganda, the
shameless sensualism, the muddy literature, the mendicity,

THE FUTURE OF SOCIALISM 405

and the besotted state of heart and mind that are begin-
ning to take hold on a part of the workers. I am free of
the foUies of the Socialists ! "

M. de Laveleye, despite his indulgence for many-
Socialistic ideas, arrives at almost analogous conclusions
when he pictures, at the conclusion of a victorious
Socialist revolution, "our capitals ravaged by dynamite
and petroleum in a more savage, and, above all, a more
systematic, fashion than was Paris in 1871."

Herbert Spencer is no less gloomy. The triumph of
Socialism, he says, would be the greatest disaster the
world has ever known, and the end of it would be
military despotism.

In the last volume of his treatise on Sociology, which
ends the great work which has taken thirty-five years
to write, he has developed the preceding conclusions,
which are those of all modern thinkers. He observes
that collectivism and communism would lead us back
to primitive barbarism, and he fears such a revolution in
the near future. This victorious phase of Socialism
could not last ; but it would produce^ he says, fearful
ravages among the nations which suffered from it, and
would end in the utter ruin of many of them.

Such will be, according to the most eminent thinkers,
the inevitable consequences of the near advent of
Socialism ; upheavals such as the times of the Terror and
the Commune give us but a faint idea of ; then the in-
evitable era of Caesars, the C»sars of the decadence,
capable of declaring their horses consuls, or of causing
any one who does not regard them with sufficient respect
to be immediately disembowelled before their eyes ; but
Caesars whom the populace would put up with, as did the
Romans, when, tired of civil wars and futile discussions,
they threw themselves into the arms of tyrants. The
tyrants .were occasionally killed when they became too

4o6 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

despotic, but. they were incessantly replaced up to the
hour of the final downfall and conquest by the Barbarians.
Many European countries also seem fated to end under
the yoke of despots, who will possibly be intelligent, but
necessarily inaccessible to all pity, and supporting not the
faintest appearance of contradiction.

The immediate fate of the nation which shall first see
the triumph of Socialism may be traced in a few lines.
The people will of course commence by despoiling and
then shooting a few thousands of employers, capitalists,
and members of the wealthy class ; in a word, all the
exploiters of labour. Intelligence and ability will be
replaced by mediocrity. The equality of servitude will
be established everywhere. The dream of the Socialists
being accomplished, eternal felicity should reign on the
earth, and Paradise descend.

Alas, no ! ... It will be hell, a terrible hell. For
what will be the end of it ?

The social disorganisation which the new rulers will
immediately bring about _will_ succeed horrible anarchy
arid general ruin. Then in all probability will appear a
Marius, a Sylla, a Bonaparte, some or another general,
who will re-establish peace with an iron rule, which will
^e preceded by immense hecatombs, which will not, as
history has seen so many times, prevent him from being
hailed as a liberator. And justly so, for that matter, for
in default of a Caesar a nation subjected to a Socialist
regime would be so speedily weakened by this regime and
by its intestine divisions that it would find itself at the
rnercy of its neighbours, and incapable of resisting their
invasions.

In this brief view of the dangers which Socialism has
in store for us, I have not spoken of the rivalry between
the various sects of Socialists which would make anarchy
still worse. A man is not a Sociahst without hating some

THE FUTURE OF SOCIALISM 407

person or thing. The Socialists detest modern society,
but they detest one another more bitterly. Already these
inevitable rivalries between the sects of Socialists have
led to the fall of the redoubtable Internationale, which
for many years made the Governments tremble, and is
to-day forgotten.

"One fundamental cause," writes M. de Lavelaye,
"contributed to the so rapid fall of the Internationale.
This cause was personal rivalry. As in the Commune
of 1871, there were divisions, suspicions, affronts, and
finally definite schisms. No authority made itself felt.
Understandings became impossible ; association dissolved
in anarchy ; yet another warning. What ! you want to
abolish the State and suppress the leaders of industry,
and you expect that order will naturally issue from the
free initiative of the federated corporations ? But if you,
who constitute, apparently, the cream of the working
classes are utterly unable to understand one another
sufficiently to maintain a society which requires no
sacrifice of you, and which had only one end, an end
desired by all, ' Down with Capital ! ' how will ordinary
workmen be able to remain united, when it is a question,
a daily question, of regulating interests in perpetual
conflict, and making decisions touching the remuneration
of each separate individual ? You were unwilling to
give in to a general council which imposed nothing at
all on you ; how, in the shops, will you obey the orders
of the men who will have to determine your task and
direct your work ? "

We can imagine, however, the gradual and pacific
establishment of Socialism by legal measures, and we
have seen that such would appear to be the probable
course of events among the Latin nations, who are
prepared for it by their past, and who are more and
more tending in the direction of State Socialism. But

4o8 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

we have seen also that it is precisely because they have
entered on this course that they are to-day in the steep
downward slope of decadence. The evil would be less
extreme in appearance, but it would not be less profound
in reality. The State, having successively absorbed all
branches of production, " would be obliged," as Signor
Molinari remarks, " to subject a portion of the nation to
forced labour for the lowest living wage ; in a word, to
establish slavery," for the cost price of articles produced
by the State is necessarily, as we have seen, higher than
the cost price of production in private industry. Servi-
tude, misery, and Csesarism are the fatal precipices to
which all the roads of the Socialists lead.

Nevertheless the frightful system would appear to be
inevitable. One nation, at least, will have to suffer it for
the instruction of the world. It will be one of those
practical lessons which alone can enlighten the nations
who are bemused with the dreams of happiness dis-
played before their eyes by the priest of the new
faith.

Let us hope that our enemies will be the first to try
this experiment. If it take place in Europe everything
leads us to suppose that the victim will be a poor, half-
ruined country, such as Italy. Many of her statesmen
had already a presentiment of the danger when they
tried for so many years to turn the storm aside by a war
with their neighbours, under the guarantee of the
German Alliance.

4, How THE Socialists might seize on the
Government of a Country.

But by what means could Socialism attain the reins of
Government ? How will it overturn the wall which
constitutes the last support of modern societies, the

THE FUTURE OF SOCIALISM 409

army ? This would be a difficult matter to-day, but it
will soon be less and less difficult, thanks to the dis-
appearance of permanent armies. This we have already
seen when considering the struggles of the classes, it will
be as well to repeat it.

Hitherto the strength of an army has been determined
not by the number of its soldiers, nor the perfection of
its armament, but by its soul, and this soul is not formed
in a day.

The few nations, such as the English, who have been
able to retain a professional army, are almost free from
the Socialist danger, and for this reason will, in the
future, enjoy a considerable superiority over their rivals.
The armies created by universal service are steadily
tending to become nothing but an ill-disciplined militia,
and history teaches us what they are worth in the hour
of danger. Let us remember that our 300,000 Gardes
Nationale, at the time of the siege of Paris, found
nothing better to do than to create the Commune and
burn the city. The famous advocate who passed by the
only chance which offered itself of disarming the multi-
tude, was later on obliged publicly to demand "pardon
of God and man" for having left them their arms. He
might have offered the excuse that he knew nothing of
the psychology of the crowd, but what excuse shall we
offer, who have not profited by such a lesson ?

On the day when these armed crowds, without real
cohesion, and without military instincts, turn themselves,
as at the time of the Commune, against the society they
are intended to defend, the end of that society will not
be far off. Then we shall see capitals in flames ; then
will come furious anarchy, then invasion, then the iron
glove of the despot liberator, and then the final deca-
dence.

The fate which threatens us is already that of certain

4IO THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

peoples. We need not fly to an unknown future to find
nations in which the dissolution of society has been
effected by their armies. We know in what a state of
miserable anarchy the Latin republics of America live.
Permanent revolution, utter dilapidation of the finances,
demoralisation of all the citizens, and, above all, of the
military element. What goes by the name of the army
is nothing but a host of undisciplined mobs, who have
no mind but for rapine, and are at the disposal of the
first general who is willing to lead them to pillage. And
every general who wishes in his turn to seize the reins
of government will always find the armed bands neces-
sary to have his rivals assassinated, and to set himself in
their place. So frequent are such affairs in all the
Latin-American republics that the European papers
have almost given up recording them, and are scarcely
more concerned with what passes in these lamentable
countries than with the affairs of the Laps, The final
lot of the southern half of America will be a return
to primitive barbarism, at least unless the United States
do it the immense service of conquering it.

Brazil alone had to some extent escaped the general
fate of which had successively fallen on all the Latin
republics of America ; but at last the inevitable era of
pronunciamientos opened for her also. On the very
morrow of the day on which the too benevolent emperor
allowed himself to be overthrown, the disorganisation
commenced, and it commenced, as always, by the army.
To-day the disorganisation is complete, and the country
is given over, like the rest of the Latin-American
republics, to perpetual military revolutions, and will in-
evitably return to barbarism, after rapidly passing through
all the stages of decadence.

To drag down the richest countries of the earth to the
level of the negro republics of San Domingo — this, alas !

THE FUTURE OF SOCIALISM 411

is what the Latin race has realised in less than a century
for half of the American continent. What a contrast
with that which the English have done in North
America ! What a contrast — ay, and what a lesson !
And how lamentable to think that such a lesson should
be lost !

5. How Socialism may be Opposed.

As the experiment of Socialism must be made in some
country or another, since only such an experience can
cure the nations of their illusions, all our efforts should
be directed to secure the accomplishment of the experi-
ment in any country but our own. It is the duty of the
writer, however small his influence may be, to do his
best to avert such a disaster in his own country. He
must give light to Socialism, and retard the hour of its
triumph — and in such a manner that this triumph may
realise itself abroad. For this he must know the secrets
of its strength and weakness, and he must also know
the psychology of its disciples. Such a study was the
object of this work.

The necessary work of defence is not to be undertaken
with arguments capable of influencing the scientist or
the philosopher. Those who are not blinded by the
desire of a loud popularity, or by the illusion, of which
every demagogue has been the victim, that they can
control at will the monster they have unchained, know
very well that man does not re-fashion societies as he
pleases, that we must submit to the natural laws which
are stronger than we, that a civilisation, at any given
moment, is a fragment of a chain to which all the years
are joined by invisible links ; that the character of a
people determines its institutions and its destinies ; that
this character is the work of centuries ; that societies are

412 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

very certainly undergoing an incessant evolution, and
that they cannot be in the future what they are to-day ;
but that very certainly this inevitable evolution will not
be determined by our fantasies and dreams.

It is not, I repeat, by such arguments that one may
influence crowds. Such arguments as are drawn from
observation, and limited by reason, are unable to con-
vince them. Little they care for reasoning, and for
books ! Neither will they suffer themselves to be seduced
by those who flatter them with the most humiliating
servility, as is done to-day. They give their support
to those that flatter them, but they support them with
a just disdain, and immediately raise the level of their
demands in proportion as the flatteries become more
excessive. To act on the crowd one must know how to
work on their sentiments, and especially on their uncon-
scious sentiments ; and one must never appeal to their
reason, for they have none. One must accordingly be
familiar with their sentiments in order to manipulate
them, and to be so familiar one must be incessantly
mixing with them, as do the priests of the new religion
that is growing under our eyes.

Are they difficult to direct, these crowds ? One must
know little of their psychology and their history to think
so. Is it necessary to be a founder of religion, such as
Mahomet, a hero such as Napoleon, or a visionary such
as Peter the Hermit, in order to steal their hearts ? No,
no! No need of these exceptionar persona,lities. It is
only a few years since we saw an obscure general, with
no greater merits than plenty of audacity, the prestige of
his uniform, and the beauty of his horse, reach the very
verge of supreme power, a limit which he dared not
cross. A Caesar without laurels and without faith, he
recoiled before the Rubicon. Let us remembei- that
history shows us that popular movements are in reality

THE FUTURE OF SOCIALISM 413

only the movements of a few leaders ; let us remember
the simplicism of crowds, their immovable conservative
instincts, and, finally, the mechanism of those elements
of persuasion which I attempted to present in a preceding
volume — affirmation, repetition, contagion and prestige.
Let us remember, again, that in spite of all appearances
it is not interest, powerful though it be in the individual,
that leads the crowd. The crowd must have an ideal,
a belief, and before it becomes impassioned by its ideal
or belief it must become impassioned by its apostles.
They, and they only, by their prestige, awaken in the
popular mind those sentiments of admiration which
furnish the most solid basis of faith.

One may direct the crowd at will when one has the
will. The most uncomfortable regimes, the most intoler-
able of despots, are always acclaimed by reason of
the sole fact that they have succeeded in establishing
themselves. In less than a century the crowds have
extended their suffrages to Marat, to Robespierre, to the
Bourbons, to Napoleon, to the Republic, and to every
chance adventurer as readily as to the great men. They
have accepted liberty and servitude with equal resignation.

In order to defend ourselves, not against the crowd, but
against its leaders, we have only to wish to do so. Un-
happily the great moral malady of our times, and one that
seems incurable among the Latins, is want of will. This
decay of will, coinciding with the lack of initiative and
the development of indifference, is the great danger which
threatens us.

These, no doubt, are generalities, and it would be easy
to descend from generalities to details. But how could
the march of events be altered by the counsels that a
writer might formulate ? Has he not completed his task
when he has presented the general principles of which
the consequences may easily be deduced ?

414 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIALISM

Again, it is of less importance to indicate what we ought
to do than to indicate what we ought not to do. The
social body is a very delicate organism, which should
be touched as seldom as possible. There is nothing
more lamentable for a State than to be for ever subject
to the fickle and unreflecting will of the crowd. If one
ought to do a great deal for the crowd, at least one ought
to do very little by means of it. It would be an immense
progress if we could merely give up our perpetual pros-
pects of reform, and also the idea that we must be always
changing our constitutions, our institutions, and our
laws. Above all ought we to limit, and not incessantly
extend, the intervention of the State, so as to force the
citizens to acquire a little of the initiative and the habit
of self-government which they are losing by the perpe-
tual tutelage that they cry for.

But once, again, what is the use of expressing such
wishes ? Is not to wish for their realisation to wish to
change our souls and to avert the course of destiny ?
The most immediately necessary of reforms, perhaps the
only one of any real use, would be the reform of our
education. But it is also the most difficult of accom-
plishment, for its realisation would really imply this veri-
table miracle — the transformation of the national mind.

How can we hope for it ? And, on the other hand,
how can we resign ourselves to silence, when we foresee
the dangers that are approaching, and when, theoretically,
it appears easy to avoid them ?

If we allow doubt, indifference, the spirit of negation
and criticism, and futile barren discussions and rivalries
to increase their hold on us — if we continue always to call
for the intervention of the State in the least affairs — we
shall soon be submerged by the barbarians. We shall be
obliged to give place to more vigorous peoples, and dis-
appear from the face of the earth.

THE FUTURE OF SOCIALISM 415

Thus perished many civilisations of the past, when
their natural defenders gave up struggle and effort. The
ruin of nations has never been effected by the lowering
of their intelligence, but by the lowering of their cha-
racter. Thus ended Athens and Rome ; thus ended
Byzantium, the heir of the civilisations of antiquity, of all
the dreams and all the discoveries of humanity, all the
treasures of art and thought that had accumulated since
the beginning of the world.

The historians relate that when the Sultan Mahomet
appeared before the great city, its inhabitants, occupied in
subtle theological discussions and in perpetual rivalry,
took little trouble to defend it. Thus the representative
of a new faith triumphed easily over such adversaries.
When he had entered the famous capital, the last refuge
of the lights of the old world, his soldiers promptly
deprived the more noisy of these babblers of their heads,
and reduced the others to servitude.

Let us strive not to imitate these descendants of too
ancient races, and let us beware of their fate. Let us
lose no time in barren recriminations and discussions.
Let us take care to defend ourselves against the enemies
who threaten us within, while yet there is no need to defend
ourselves against the enemies without. Do not let us
disdain the slightest effort, and let each contribute it in
his sphei-e, however modest it may be. Let us, without
ceasing, study the problems with which the sphinx con-
fronts us, and which we must answer under pain of being
devoured by her. And when we think, in our secret
hearts, that such counsels are perhaps as vain as the
vows made to an invalid whose days have been num-
bered by fate, let us act as if we did not think so.

UNWIN BROTHERS, THE GRESHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON,

MAY 23 1900